


cozy as fuck in there

by caledfwlchthat



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Closets, Coming Out, Dream Bubbles, Fat Vriska Jokes, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Xenophobia, M/M, Multi, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pillow & Blanket Forts, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Retcon Meteor, References to Depression, Troll/Human Sloppy Makeouts, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 22:17:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19238188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caledfwlchthat/pseuds/caledfwlchthat
Summary: JOHN:	oh god, you were making out in aliteralcloset.KARKAT:	WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING.DAVE:	dont listen to him k pop hes being egbert dense again





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CassandraOOC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CassandraOOC/gifts).



> Thanks so much @CassandraOOC for the great prompts! I ended up taking the "feel free not to use any, these are just jumping off points" option, but was heavily inspired by your Trickster and Walk-In prompts. These three really took me for a ride, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

CTG: or maybe it was a guy who rejected you  
?CG: FUCK OFF.  
CTG: haha wow bingo  
CTG: see how i look right now thats a poker face might want to take some notes  
?CG: I SEE NOTHING BUT A COWARD BEHIND DARK EYEWEAR CLEARLY DESIGNED FOR WOMEN AND A PAIR OF IMPUDENT LIPS PURSED SO TIGHT IT'LL SOUND LIKE AIR SQUEALING OUT OF A BALLOON WHEN I PUNCH YOU IN THE GUT.  
CTG: oh god stop talking about my lips thats the second time  
CTG: ok youre clearly gay and youve probably got some issues about it dude  
CTG: john just a heads up in the future i think youre gonna spurn one of his awkward advances  
CEB: uh oh!  
?CG: JOHN DON'T LISTEN TO THIS FUCKER, HE'S THE WORST GUY AT GIVING ADVICE I'VE EVER SEEN.  
CEB: yeah, i dunno dave, i have talked to karkat a lot and i really don't think he has a thing for me.  
?CG: EXACTLY. JOHN ONCE AGAIN IS FLYING HIGH AS SMARTEST HUMAN.  
?CG: AND JOHN, PURELY HYPOTHETICALLY, IF ONE OF US IN THE FUTURE DOES MAKE SOME SORT OF SOLICITATION YOU DON'T QUITE UNDERSTAND...  
?CG: BECAUSE OF PERHAPS SOME CULTURAL DIFFERENCES  
?CG: I MEAN NO ONE IN PARTICULAR HERE  
?CG: MAYBE TRY TO UNDERSTAND THAT PERSON MIGHT NOT BE THINKING TOO CLEARLY AT THAT MOMENT  
CEB: uh...  
?CG: IT MIGHT BE THE CASE THAT THIS PERSON HAS GOTTEN TOO WRAPPED UP IN A SORT OF CALIGINOUS IDEAL  
?CG: AND GET CARRIED AWAY, POSSIBLY SO MUCH SO THEY WERE BLIND TO HOW COMPLETELY FUCKED UP AND WEIRD IT WOULD BE TO PURSUE ANYTHING LIKE THAT WITH ANOTHER SPECIES  
?CG: ESPECIALLY ONE THAT DIDN'T EVEN UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF A CALIGINIOUS RELATIONSHIP...  
CTG: what  
CTG: the fuck  
CTG: are you talking about  
CEB: i think he's talking about that one time he...  
CEB: wait.  
CEB: dave, did i ever tell you about that?  
?CG: I SAID *PURELY* HYPOTHETICALLY, JOHN!  
?CG: AS IN, A FICTIONAL, COUNTERFACTUAL SITUATION THAT HAS DEFINITELY NOT ALREADY HAPPENED YET IN YOUR FUTURE!  
CTG: hahaha ohhh man  
CEB: oh jeez, more time shenanigans...  
CEB: but hold on, HASN'T it already happened in the future?  
?CG: DON'T YOU *DARE* REMEMBER FROM A FUTURE THAT HASN'T HAPPENED YET  
CTG: this is gonna make such sweet blackmail material i can smell it  
?CG: WHAT IS. THERE ISN'T ANY, END OF DISCUSSION.  
?CG: ALSO, FUCK YOU *BOTH* TO WITHIN INCHES OF YOUR LIVES.  
CTG: AHAHAHAHAHA OH MY GOD  
?CG: GET *STUFFED*, STRIDER!!!  
CEB: okay, now i know there has got to be something.  
?CG: LOOSE LIPS SCUTTLE SHIPS, EGBERT!  
CTG: JESUS his word choice is gayer than a pride bus full of drag queens and hes riding it all the way to consummation station  
?CG: WHAT IS WITH THIS "GAY" THING?! YOU'RE LIKE A GOUGED AUDIO DISC!  
?CG: CAN YOU THINK OF ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE TO BUST MY BULGE ABOUT?!  
CTG: spill it john i want to see how tight his own lips pucker up as he gets ready to start kissing my ass forever  
CEB: uh... wow, dave.  
CEB: i, um, i'm not really sure your word choice is much better?  
CTG: john what are you talking about my words are the choicest there are  
CTG: like prime cuts of grade a rump steak sizzling hot on the grill  
CTG: the rarest and juiciest all you can eat or your boondollars back  
CEB: but honestly, that sounds kind of gay to me too!  
CEB: so if that's your basis for making fun of karkat, i'm not sure you really have a leg to stand on.  
?CG: FOR FUCK'S SAKE, EGBERT, I CAN DEFEND MYSELF HERE!  
?CG: STOP MAKING ME LOOK WEAK IN FRONT OF STRIDER, IT'S EMBARRASSING  
CTG: christ john the only thing weaker than your gaydar is your ironydar  
CEB: all i am saying is, do you want karkat actually kissing your ass?  
CEB: like, be careful what you wish for, you know?  
CTG: dude come on i cant keep watching you embarrass yourself here  
CTG: youve always been a little slow on the draw but not even he takes that particular idiom literally and hes actually from another planet  
CTG: hey you didnt take that idiom literally did you bro  
?CG: OH, I'M SORRY, ARE YOU FINALLY TALKING TO *ME* AGAIN?  
?CG: INSTEAD OF JUST DISCUSSING ME AND MY REACTIONS IN THE THIRD PERSON WHILE I AM *RIGHT HERE* THE ENTIRE TIME?!  
CTG: will you unbunch your pink silk panties for like two goddamn seconds  
?CG: MY SOLE REGRET IS THAT I HAVE ONLY TWO MIDDLE FINGERS TO WAVE IN YOUR DIRECTION WITH ACCOMPANYING MOCKING FLATULENCE NOISES!  
CEB: oh my GOD, you guys!  
CEB: this argument is getting nowhere!  
CEB: can we agree that saying stupid things doesn't make you gay?   
CEB: what were we actually supposed to be talking about again?  
?CG: FUCK IT, I'M TOO TIRED TO CARE ANYMORE.  
?CG: EXCEPT THAT I THOROUGHLY DESPISE BOTH OF YOU, OF COURSE.  
CEB: dave, do you remember?  
CTG: you mean the part before taking a hard left at "no homo"  
CTG: i mean sure i remember but im not gonna remind vant-ass or hes just gonna start riding my jock about it again  
CEB: the weird thing is, i feel...  
CEB: like we've had this conversation before?  
CEB: but something about it doesn't seem right!  
CEB: i am not sure it is going the way it was supposed to go.  
CTG: uhhh  
?CG: FUCK  
CTG: shit  
?CG: YOU'RE RIGHT, JOHN. THIS ISN'T HOW IT WENT AT ALL.  
CTG: karkat uh  
CTG: about all that stuff we just typed up there  
CTG: are you having the same reaction to it as i am  
?CG: THAT KIND OF DEPENDS ON WHAT YOUR REACTION IS, DAVE.  
CTG: not one that translates well to typing  
?CG: IN THAT CASE, UHHH.  
?CG: MAYBE?  
CTG: awesome  
CEB: so what does this mean?  
CEB: am i... dreaming?  
CEB: are we... are we all dreaming?  
CTG: yes obviously  
CTG: all of us are clearly dreaming john and none of this was real  
CTG: therefore just as obviously none of it counts so forget about it  
CTG: ive had enough of this bullshit for now if you need me ill be in the break room making comics  
?CG: YEAH, OKAY, COOL.  
?CG: THAT SOUNDS GOOD TO ME, ACTUALLY.  
CEB: huh?  
CTG: oh my god shut up dude  
?CG: OH, RIGHT. SORRY.  
CEB: what the hell?!  
CTG: seeya john  
CTG: later windbag  
?CG: YEAH, SURE. FUCK YOU TOO, STRIDER.  
?CG: DREAM OVER. GET OUTTA HERE.  
CEB: wait, hold on!

?CG banned CEB from responding to memo.  
?CG banned CTG from responding to memo.  
?CG closed memo.  


**> Recap.**

Your name is JOHN EGBERT, and as both you and the reader know by now, this conversation didn't go the way you expected. Your best buddy DAVE STRIDER and your self-styled troll nemesis KARKAT VANTAS have both mysteriously ditched you to go AFK at the same time, which... what the hell was that about? What were you... you were talking about...

Oh yeah. Troll girls. So weird.

That's what the _first part_ of the conversation was about, wasn't it -- your increasing, and increasingly ambiguous, entanglement with the charming yet sociopathic VRISKA SERKET, and Dave's with the acerbic, calculating TEREZI PYROPE? It turns out Karkat was needlessly worried, about you at least -- you never got to meet Vriska in person. You're still convinced that Cage marathon you'd planned with her would have been _totally_ sweet. That makes you extra jealous of Dave now, getting to ride that meteor with Terezi and Vriska. And Karkat. And the others too, naturally.

All those TROLL/HUMAN SLOPPY MAKEOUTS. It's not that you mind that part much. It's probably just as well that you don't really know what you're missing. Other than your friends.

But what about the _rest_ of that conversation?! Somewhere in there, Karkat's rambling about solicitations you might or might not understand reminded you of his first conversation with you, and your last with him. That weirdly desperate hateflirting... if that's really a thing? Even the vaguest allusion to it was enough to send Karkat into a death spiral of defensiveness and Dave into an unusually aggressive flurry of Gay Jokes. Which seemed mean-spirited, even as snarky as your friend is.

Your eyes glaze over in the general direction of the screen for a while, lines of gray and red and blue text swimming into each other. You let your mind go slack and allow boredom to wash over you like the tide coming in. The whine of hard drive fans, the slow whoosh of wind through the ceiling vent, and the distant rumble of the ship's engines propelling you towards your destination collectively form the soundtrack to your meditation, such as it is.

Ship's engines? Yeah, here you are. But you were sitting way up on your house, miles above the surface of your cloud-covered personal planet, when you had that conversation! This is... suddenly not there.

All right, cool, your surroundings don't seem very stable right now which means Dave was right, you're definitely dreaming. Well, why not make the most of it? Dreams have had some pretty weird and uncomfortably metaphysical connotations ever since you bit down hard on that cruxtruded apple, but that hasn't bothered you as much as some of your other friends. Anyway, the point is that Dave and Karkat are off being weird somewhere, without you, and you're bored as shit.

What will you do?

** > John: Explore your surroundings. **

Might as well have a look around, couldn't hurt to oh wait you've seen this a billion times now there's nothing interesting here AUGH.

Okay okay okay. You're in the ship's COMPUTER ROOM. Every terminal obviously has PESTERCHUM, but also some old versions of your ship-bound social group's WEB BROWSERS (Typheus, Echidna, Hephaestus), some basic ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE (also out of date), and whatever ONLINE GAMES you were able to scavenge from your house -- or alchemize. The servers in the Furthest Ring are mostly filled with ARCANE LORE only ROSE LALONDE could love, but every now and then someone comes up with a good MEME. You've seen all the ones circulating lately though: they're mostly cheap imitations of Dave's shitty comics, somehow less shitty and therefore pallid in their mediocrity, with no aspirations to be truly and transcendently awful.

You slowly stand up, pushing the chair away from the computer desk with a scrape on the floor, and with hands shoved deep into your magic blue track suit's pockets start stalking petulantly around the gold ship's narrow, stuffy, oppressively gaudy corridors. Maybe you'll run into your ecto-sister JADE HARLEY, or that orange feathery asshole DAVE SPRITE? Or maybe not, if this is a dream there's no guarantee.

Hold on. You haven't had a dream since going god tier that wasn't in a bubble. And the first part of the dream was a memory of stuff you were doing with Dave and Karkat. Does that mean they're around somewhere?

Suddenly the stakes seem a little higher. You pick up the pace, start taking more notice of your surroundings. The look and feel is consistent with what you expect, but the actual layout is unfamiliar. You're either in a part of the ship you haven't been in before, or your dreaming brain is just making shit up and you'll turn the corner to find yourself back at school, only sans pants and about to bomb an exam you forgot to study for.

The next corner you turn opens up into another hallway -- wider, cooler, with bits of rock embedded into the ceiling. You start jogging now as garish gold corridor morphs into rough-hewn tunnel, and the clang of your footsteps on corrugated iron fade into the echo of taps on shining brushed-metal floors. You're just running at random now, going where your whims take you, which you imagine will be closer to Dave and Karkat, wherever they are. You steer by intention rather than the compass, after the ineffable logic of somnambulism.

The corridors just seem to get longer, higher, vaultier with more twists and turns the farther you go in. You get sick of jogging and start flying instead, but even that just seems too slow. You want to find those two, and you want to find them _before_ you -- or they -- wake up. Try using your brain, numbnuts!

** > John: Uh... do the Windy Thing? **

You got this! Somehow. What's the best way to search the area? Is there some kind of Windy Thing you can do?

You know a few Windy Things by now, one of 'em has to be good for this kind of situation. The usual Windy Thing, the one where you summon up a cyclone strong enough to sweep a planet clean, doesn't seem like it'll do much for you here. There's also the one you use for escape or stealth movement, where you turn into a puff of breath and let the breeze blow you around. That seems slightly better, especially if you want to surprise them, which obviously you do because hello, you are talking to the pranking _master_.

Wait, what if you turn into wind _and_ blow through the ventilation shafts? Couldn't you just sort of go everywhere at once? Yeah! _Now_ you're cooking with gas. The air's kind of dead here, but you can stir up a little push, and there's a vent right above you that you could ride into.

You take a deep breath, close your eyes, and on the exhale let your body disperse into a dense cloud of vapor. You can't see, hear, or talk in this form -- all you have is a basic proprioception, density sense, and smell -- but they should be enough. So you shut up and get to work diffusing.

Even still, it takes a while. This place is way bigger than you expected, wherever it is. You stretch thinner and thinner, feeling your way blindly through the branching tunnels, expanding to fill the available space. There's a balance to strike, because the thinner you go, the less you can feel anything. But the volume advantage makes up for it, and most of that volume is so surgically clean that the parts giving off any odor at all almost overwhelm you with their redolence: rubbing alcohol and formaldehyde down in what could be the basement lab; foreign herbs and unfamiliar forms of meat jerky in a kitchen or pantry; coffee in a break room; clean sheets in bedrooms.

And one closet that smells like cleaning supplies and... sweat. And something else biological, something strong that piques your curiosity, draws you in and _demands_ you take a look. The other smells make sense on a ship, and Dave or Karkat could be in any of the other rooms, but who's in here?

** > John: Pull yourself together. **

Taking note of the relative positions of those other smells, you gather your substance together and will it to congeal back into your normal self, floating two feet above the floor. The hallway looks just like all the others; if you hadn't smelled its contents, there's no real reason you should have chosen this one first.

Your regular human sense of smell isn't nearly sensitive enough to pick out the contents of the closet anymore, but your _hearing_ is: the rustling of cloth; some titillating sucking sounds; a clatter as someone bumps against a shelf in the dark, followed by a whispered haha dude stop and shut up shut up.

Wow, can you hear those text colors too? You can, can't you. A tiny shoot of suspicion starts to break new ground in your subconscious, growing with each sloppy slurp until it bursts into full bloom the moment you hear oh, dave... *fuck*. That one lets you _feel_ the colors now, or rather color, singular, namely, bright red, in your face, and forces you to whisper with more volume and less tact:

JOHN: dave?!  
JOHN: karkat?!  


The immediate reply is a loud THUMP and OW! and a metallic rattle as someone's head connects with the underside of one of the shelves. It must not be that big a closet.  


KARKAT: OH, *FUCK*.  
KARKAT: DAVE!!!  
DAVE: christ karkat will you just zip it  


You jiggle the handle to the door, which one or both of them is grabbing from the inside so you can't quite turn it. Undeterred, you plant your right leg against the door frame and pull while cranking on the handle as hard as you can.

JOHN: guys! i know you're in there!  
KARKAT: SHIT! *SHIT*!!!  
DAVE: go away john theres nobody here  
DAVE: youre dreaming all of this it isnt real  
JOHN: dave, i *know* i'm dreaming! that is why i came to find you!  
KARKAT: OW!!! GOD DAMN IT DAVE  
JOHN: come on, what's --  


All that hammer swinging must have beefed you up, because the handle suddenly gives way and the door flies open, slamming against the opposite wall and dumping you unceremoniously on the floor. You look up in bewilderment.

Dave and Karkat are pressed up against each other. Karkat's right hand is reaching up under Dave's shirt, and Dave's left hand has a firm grip on Karkat's... ass? The fingers of their other hands are wrapped together around the opposite broken end of the door handle. Their hair is carelessly mussed. Karkat's waistband is askew, as if suddenly yanked upwards to give him a really painful wedgie. That sweaty smell is definitely them. Karkat gawks at you in a weird mix of shock, anger, shame, and something else you've never seen from anyone, much less a troll...

Of course you can't see Dave's eyes. One corner of his mouth twitches upwards, ever so slightly, but his face looks almost as flushed as yours.

DAVE: well shit  



	2. Chapter 2

HOLY SHIT IT'S KARKAT. AND DAVE. **DAVE** IS MAKING OUT WITH **KARKAT**. HOLY **SHIT**. YOUR COOLEST AND MOST MASCULINE BEST INTERNET FRIEND EVER IS TOTALLY GAY FOR A CRABBY ALIEN TROLL HE WAS JUST MOCKING FOR SUPPOSEDLY BEING GAY. WHAT THE **FUCK.**

What the ACTUAL... uh. John.

John, you're just sort of sitting there with one eyebrow raised. Weaksauce! This is a SHOCKING REVELATION that you _definitely_ didn't expect. Not that the READER wouldn't have anticipated a scenario something like this, especially given the TAGS at the top of the page, and the nature of the COLLECTION this work is appearing in. And, in the case of my giftee, the PROMPT they know they gave me. It was even FORESHADOWED in the altered PESTERLOG, with Dave protesting just the RIGHT AMOUNT OF TOO MUCH, and then SHEEPISHLY EXITING once it became clear the conversation was actually a BUBBLE DREAM! But you're on record for thousands of canon and fanon pages now as being REMARKABLY OBTUSE about this kind of thing. Sure, Dave and Karkat's UNFORTUNATE PHRASING in the previous conversation was more than a little weird, but until now you didn't connect that at all with the SLIGHTEST POSSIBILITY of the SHITTY TWIST now laid before you. Why aren't you more surprised? Shouldn't this be triggering a MENTAL BREAKDOWN of some kind?

Oh, that's right. You're also on record as having really subdued reactions to things that would crack some of your friends like a nut. It's gonna take you a little longer to get to the same page as them. Shit shit shit, evidently this is the wrong disk, hold on, let me ^C
    
    
    A> dir
    
        Volume in drive A is HAMSTEAK
        Directory of A:\FANFIC\POLYSWAP\REDACTED
    
    .            <DIR>     6-16-19   3:37p
    ..           <DIR>     6-21-19   2:23a
    COZYAF   EXE    16159  6-16-19   3:37p
    
    A> cd b:\fanfic\polyswap\redacted
    B> dir
    
        Volume in drive B is HOMESTUCK
        Directory of B:\FANFIC\POLYSWAP\REDACTED
    
    .            <DIR>     6-22-19   5:41p
    ..           <DIR>     6-22-19   5:41p
    COZYAF   EXE    19767  6-22-19   5:41p
    
    B> cozyaf

CTG: or maybe it was a guy who rejected you  
?CG: FUCK OFF.  
CTG: haha wow bingo  
CTG: see how i look right now thats a po<PgDn><PgDn><PgDn><PgDn><PgDn>  


DAVE: well shit  


Okay. So yeah, this is kind of weird. You don't really have any comparison points for it; intimate moments in your 1990s disaster movies or romcoms tend not to happen in stuffy supply closets on alien meteors. There's no template, no mythos you can easily slot your friends into. You try to sort of squint really hard and imagine Dave is Bruce Willis. No wait, make him Dave again and imagine Karkat is Matthew McConaughey. Wait, no. Fuck. This isn't working.

Sorry dude, you're on your own.

But you're taking it in stride... while Strider takes it in the LOL NOPE that wasn't your joke and you aren't gonna finish it and anyway whatever that would have been isn't what they're doing, at least not now, he's just sort of grabbed Karkat's ass so this is embarrassing but nothing that would seriously compromise the story's rating. Yet, anyway. What if you'd gotten there five minutes later? Or given them less warning? That could have been... _oh man._ You manage to go even redder and try to vent some of the excess color by letting out a nervous chuckle.

DAVE: ok john i know what youre thinking but this isnt what it looks like  
JOHN: haha, um, if you say so?  
JOHN: because it _looks_ like you're... making out with karkat!  
DAVE: balls  
KARKAT: WOW, *BRILLIANT* DEDUCTION, EGBERT!  
KARKAT: I AM ASTOUNDED BY YOUR ROMANCE ACUMEN. I MAY AS WELL JUST BURN MY ROMANCE CARD, THERE'S NO WAY I CAN COMPETE WITH GENIUS LIKE YOURS.  
JOHN: wow, really?  
KARKAT: *NO*, NOT REALLY, YOU ABSOLUTE SHIT-GOBBLING *CRETIN*  
DAVE: hey cut him some slack special k  
KARKAT: WILL YOU STOP CALLING ME THAT!  
DAVE: we both knew john was gonna show up and who could really blame him for wanting to hang during this yawnfest of a space trip  
DAVE: i just thought we might have time for a quickie before he got here  
DAVE: since we havent dreamed into the same bubble much lately  
JOHN: uhhh...  
KARKAT: WELL, OBVIOUSLY WE DIDN'T!  
KARKAT: WE BOTH KNEW IT WAS STUPID AND RISKY, SO WE GET WHAT WE DESERVE!  
DAVE: yeah sorry crabcakes thats on me  
DAVE: i mean fuck how did he find us so fast in this rats maze  
JOHN: oh, it was easy! i just --  
KARKAT: ALSO, STOP TALKING, YOU JUST KEEP DIGGING THE HOLE DEEPER!  
KARKAT: THIS ISN'T THE BACKSTORY OLYMPICS HERE, THIS IS DAMAGE CONTROL!  
DAVE: dude hes already seen us not much damage left to control  
DAVE: but johns cool he wont rat on us to the others  
DAVE: will you john  


Well, just because you aren't freaking out doesn't mean you know what to say. Dave's little mouth tic is gone now and his face looks dead blank. Karkat's wide eyes tick back and forth between you and Dave like a metronome of humiliation, and his sharp troll's teeth grind audibly with the effort of not killing you. You'd better marshal some kind of response, and quick.

JOHN: uh, no!  
JOHN: no, of course i won't.  
JOHN: what kind of friend do you think i am?  
DAVE: thanks john  
DAVE: thats yknow  
DAVE: actually a big weight off  
JOHN: also, it's, uh.  
JOHN: it's good to see you, dave!  
DAVE: yeah same  
DAVE: and like  
DAVE: uh  
DAVE: ...  
JOHN: yeah?  
DAVE: this doesnt uh  
DAVE: change anything  
DAVE: between us does it  
DAVE: like were still the best of bros right  


That's... kind of a weird question? But this is kind of a weird situation.

JOHN: totally!  
JOHN: why should anything be different?  
DAVE: well  
DAVE: because  
DAVE: ...  
DAVE: you know  
DAVE: ...  
DAVE: ...  
JOHN: know what?  
DAVE: holy shit that doesnt matter at all to you does it  
DAVE: youre being so oblivious in your completely trademark way  
KARKAT: OH MY GOD, I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!  
JOHN: no, it's totally cool! i completely understand.  


You don't, really, not yet, but that doesn't seem as important as:

JOHN: and it's fine! everything is fine.  
JOHN: you can relax now!  
KARKAT: NO WE CAN'T  
DAVE: no uh  
DAVE: yeah i guess we can  
JOHN: but, man...  
JOHN: i'm sorry, i gotta ask.  
KARKAT: NO YOU DON'T  
DAVE: put a sock in it capital k  
DAVE: go for it john  
JOHN: why are you and karkat making out _in a supply closet?_  


With an audible twang like a snapping bowstring, Karkat launches himself across the corridor at you, bowling you over and pinning you to the floor.

KARKAT: AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!!  


The whole length of him against you is the first lecture of a crash course in troll intimacy that you're pretty sure you missed enrollment for. In fact, this promises to be the exam you almost dreamt about failing.

KARKAT: HOW, EGBERT?! HOW DO YOU KEEP DOING THIS TO ME?!?!  
KARKAT: OF ALL THE DETRITUS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN SALVAGED FROM THE WRECK OF THE UNIVERSE I CREATED, ALMOST ALL OF WHICH I WILL NEVER TOUCH, I AM SOMEHOW CONTINUALLY SADDLED WITH *YOU*.  
KARKAT: LIKE THE MIGRATORY MARINEFOWL HUNG AROUND DUALSCAR'S NECK AS HE ROAMED THE RAGING MAIN.  
KARKAT: ACROSS TIMELINES, BETWEEN SESSIONS, AND APPARENTLY THROUGH SOME BIZARRE RETCON BULLSHIT CREATED FOR YOU EXPLICITLY TO ANTAGONIZE ME!  
KARKAT: ALWAYS RAISING A HUNDRED TIMES AS MANY QUESTIONS AS YOU ANSWER, EXCEPT THE ONES YOU ACTUALLY ASK, WHICH ANY WIGGLER OUT OF THEIR FIRST MOLT WOULD LAUGH THEIR NUGS OFF AT YOU FOR NOT KNOWING THE ANSWERS TO!  
KARKAT: SHOWING UP WHERE I LEAST EXPECT IT, WHEN I AM LEAST PREPARED FOR IT, AND WHERE I MOST CERTAINLY *NEVER* FUCKING WANT IT!!!  
KARKAT: GOD DAMN IT, JOHN!  
KARKAT: THE PRIMARY FACTOR PREVENTING ME FROM COMMITTING SEPPUKU TO ESCAPE YOUR STUPIDITY IS THE BLEAK CERTAINTY THAT YOU WOULD FIND ME IN THESE BUBBLES ANYWAY AND HAUNT ME FOR LITERALLY FOREVER!!!  


He's smaller than both you and Dave, but he makes up for it in ferocity, banging you hard against the floor with both hands by the front of your hoodie. You keep your head up to ward off a concussion, but your shoulders are taking a beating.

JOHN: ow! OW! karkat, will you STOP?!  


You try to push him off by bucking up with your hips, but it doesn't have the effect you'd hoped. Far from being dislodged, he clings to you even more tenaciously and the flame in his glare is stoked to a furnace of apoplexy. You pound with your fists against his back, but he holds firm. You try flipping him over, but it's like your shoulders are glued to the floor.

JOHN: OW! GET OFF ME, ASSHOLE!  
JOHN: AAAHHH! WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL DID YOU NEED TO JUMP ON ME FOR?!  
JOHN: HOLY CRAP, YOU'RE BEING SUCH A OWWWWW OW OW OW!!!  


Taking another tack, you wrap your arms around and crush him to your chest to remove his leverage, which lets you try to OH GOD HE'S SINKING THOSE TEETH INTO YOUR SHOULDER.

JOHN: AAAAAARRHGHNGHHH!!!  
KARKAT: NNRRGHGHMFFHMMFF!!!  
DAVE: ffs  


To the outside observer it probably looks like one of those cartoon fight clouds, with fists and boots poking out at random intervals from a whirlwind of dust and @#$*!!! From your perspective, you both roll down the corridor inside some unseen hate barrel, more square than round given the bumpy ride as one or the other of you pushes to be on top.

KARKAT: THFFS MFRF LFFK FFTT!!!  
JOHN: OW! FUCK! WHAT ARE YOU EVEN SAYING!  
DAVE: ok guys ENOUGH of this already  


Dave yanks hard on Karkat's hair, which disengages his teeth and manages to pull him off you entirely.

KARKAT: I SAID, THAT'S MORE *LIKE* IT.  


They immediately start arguing.

DAVE: what the fuck was that about man  
KARKAT: THAT WAS A PERFECTLY NATURAL AND *PLATONIC* REACTION TO HIS EXTREME STUPIDITY, WHICH SEEMS TO HAVE REASSERTED ITSELF IN SPADES.  
JOHN: haha, spades, ohhh man...  
KARKAT: GET *STUFFED*, EGBERT.  
DAVE: the one time on this whole stupid trip my best friend comes to visit me in a dream  
DAVE: and the first thing you do --  
KARKAT: HEY, HOW DO YOU KNOW HE DIDN'T COME TO VISIT ME TOO!  
JOHN: yeah, dave! how do you --  


You look back at your shoulder to inspect the damage, and find surprisingly little. It seems Karkat was mostly biting into the fabric of your hood. Pulling it down, you see that the skin underneath is bruised and throbbing and covered in nasty troll slobber. The word _hickey_ comes almost unbidden to mind and you resume your furious blushing. You hope Dave and Karkat didn't notice.

Oh, _now_ your brain is melting like some tech bro's frozen head in a cryonics lab during a power outage on a Dubai summer's day. Your rhythm is off, John.

DAVE: the FIRST THING you do is go full spades perv on him  
DAVE: for fucks sake like really the only scenario that im sure would cause him to regret success  
DAVE: i just knew you still had some kind of kismecrush on him still  
DAVE: and you know how i feel about that so just slow your roll ok  
KARKAT: WHAT, ARE YOU GOING ALL ASHEN FOR US ALREADY?!  
KARKAT: WAIT TILL THAT CLUCKBEAST HATCHES BEFORE YOU COUNT IT, WHY DON'T YOU.  
DAVE: does that mean youre gonna sit on him again to keep him warm  
KARKAT: OH, SHUT *UP*.  


Your rapidly defrosting head is spinning. This is the first time you've met Karkat in... sort of person! But he's... but he and Dave are a thing? How should you behave towards him? Does he really still have some kind of kisme-crush on you? Now that you think about it, how do you feel about him maybe still having a kisme-crush on you? What's up with that? I mean, apart from him trying to beat the shit out of you at the slightest provocation? Is Dave jealous, or just being protective of his best bud? What should you do? Oh man!

JOHN: wow, so... _that_ was what that was about?  


Smooth!

KARKAT: AND EVEN IF THAT *HAD* BEEN MY INTENTION, MAKING EGBERT COMPLICIT WOULD BE THE EASIEST WAY FOR US TO KEEP HIS IGNORANCE SHAFT SHUT.  
KARKAT: IF YOU SPONGE-DEAD HUMANS LEARNED NOTHING ELSE FROM TEREZI AND VRISKA IN YOUR PREVIOUS BUMBLING XENOROMANTIC FORAYS, YOU SHOULD HAVE LEARNED AT LEAST THAT MUCH.  
DAVE: complicit  
DAVE: is that what the kids are calling it these days  
KARKAT: CAN YOU THINK OF A BETTER SHORTHAND FOR SHARED SHAME?  
DAVE: anyway dude youre just not being nearly as slick as you think  
DAVE: like even for trolls would you not interpret that as coming on more than a little strong  
JOHN: listen guys, it wasn't... uh... really _that_ \--  
DAVE: wait shut up  
KARKAT: NO JOHN, IT WAS --  
DAVE: shut UP man  
DAVE: listen  
DAVE: ...  
KARKAT: ...  
JOHN: ...  


Are those... footsteps in the hallway? High-heeled boots, by the sound of 'em.

KARKAT: OHHH SHIT  
DAVE: shit shit shit  
DAVE: everyone back in  
JOHN: wait, what?  
DAVE: shut up and get IN HERE john  


Dave grabs you by the ear and twists. You stifle a yelp as you're drawn back into the closet and the door is drawn in behind you. It half-opens again as Dave realizes he hasn't got the door handle. You hand your end over to him and with shaking, fumbling fingers you both try in vain to screw the stripped threads back together. The outside half of the handle ends up hanging limply towards the floor like a flaccid OH GOD SHUT UP SHUT UP, but hopefully it'll be just good enough to convince whoever's about to walk by, and with that minimal preparation the three of you pull the closet door shut as the footsteps approach a bend in the corridor.

KARKAT: ...  
JOHN: ...  
DAVE: ...  


The footsteps get louder as they approach. It's stuffy, and your own sweat is starting to add to the general manfunk all up in this damp nook. Two was already company in here, but three's definitely a crowd and you have to suck your gut in and hold your breath while Dave struggles to latch the door behind you. The inhalation gives you a giant huff of that special stank you don't remember smelling before finding the closet, which makes you a little queasy and stirs... things that... uhhhhh.

You're not really sure what to think or feel right now, all you can do is hope that those tapping footsteps won't find you out. Closer... closer... then pausing for an uncomfortably long time as you're squashed up against Dave and Karkat, your heart bashing against your rib cage trying to make its own escape from this increasingly awkward situation. You hear whispers, much softer than yours had been, you can't quite make them out. Then thank _fuck,_ finally, they recede.

You all wait another good five painful minutes contorted and jammed like live Tetris blocks into the closet, with Karkat's elbow stabbing you in the stomach and one of his nubby horns excavating the soft underside of your chin, before you collectively allow yourselves a sigh of relief and exit the closet to resume your conversation.


	3. Chapter 3

JOHN: who was that, you guys?  
DAVE: probably rose and kanaya  
DAVE: out taking their evening constitutional or something suitably victorian sounding  
DAVE: mary kay must be all dolled up in her fancy footwear  
JOHN: oh man, and we were hiding from them?!  
DAVE: god are you kidding me of course we were  
DAVE: do you even know what rose would give for the chance to freudianize all of us after everything youve seen so far  
DAVE: wed never make it off her couch alive  
KARKAT: YEAH, AND WE'RE UNBELIEVABLY GODDAMN LUCKY IT WAS ONLY THEM.  
KARKAT: TEREZI WOULD'VE SNIFFED US OUT FOR SURE.  
KARKAT: AND VRISKA WOULD'VE OPENED THE DOOR JUST ON PRINCIPLE.  
DAVE: she wins at monty haul every goddamn time  
JOHN: aw jeez, vriska too!  
JOHN: i promised vriska we'd have a nic cage marathon!  
JOHN: but there's also rose, and... terezi...  
JOHN: this sucks! i want to see everybody!  
DAVE: well were not done with you here yet  
DAVE: gonna straight up monopolize your attention for a while  
DAVE: i call dibs on exclusive rights to john egberts ass right now  
DAVE: which i may at my discretion decide to sublicense to karkat if he shapes his shit up and doesnt do anything else dumb  
KARKAT: BY WHAT QUESTIONABLE METRIC AM *I* DOING THE DUMB THINGS HERE?  
DAVE: the one where you nearly mauled john to death and had to explain that it really was a banana in your pocket  
JOHN: come on! this is so lame!  
JOHN: what the heck is your problem?!  
KARKAT: ISN'T IT OBVIOUS, DUNKASS?  
KARKAT: WE'RE TRYING TO EVADE DISCOVERY.  


Karkat's glare has softened by now from blazing fury to smoldering contempt. Instead of stabbing straight through your face and out the back of your head, his line of sight becomes a tow line that tries to pull you along with it.

Something crystallizes in your mind. For them this is worse than the regular embarrassment of being walked in on by a friend, where the walker-in-on just turns around and walks back out again and politely agrees to "forget" what they just saw. The problem there would be less about what was going on than about the inconvenience of it going on in that particular place at that particular time. No, your friend and his troll actually _might not want their other friends to find out in the first place_ that they're officially on makeout terms.

JOHN: ...  
JOHN: oh!  
JOHN: OHHHH.  
JOHN: oh god, you were making out in a _literal_ closet.  
KARKAT: WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING.  
DAVE: dont listen to him k pop hes being egbert dense again  
DAVE: john that means nothing its just cozy as fuck in there is all  
JOHN: but i mean, what's the big deal?  
JOHN: aren't you guys, like, gay dating now or something?  
DAVE: oh lord here we go  
KARKAT: GOD, WE'D JUST CALL IT "DATING", JOHN!  
KARKAT: IF THAT WAS ACTUALLY WHAT WE WERE DOING, THAT IS.  
JOHN: i thought you called it being in a quadrant.  
KARKAT: STOP BEING PEDANTIC AND LET DAVE EXPLAIN.  
KARKAT: HE'S GOING TO BE INCALCULABLY MORE PATIENT THAN I EVER COULD BE.  


With this invocation, Dave sighs and assumes a pose of long-suffering, manly stoicism, his head bowed and the palm of his right hand applied firmly to his temple. After a few seconds of pressure, he drops the hand, paces back and forth a few times, then turns around with index finger raised as if about to begin a scholarly lecture. It's only when he fails to say anything, standing half-dazed with his mouth hanging open, that you realize he still hasn't collected enough of his thoughts yet to explain.

Dave Strider, actually at a loss for words? But then, just when you're about to break the increasingly uncomfortable silence to prompt him, he pushes an open palm towards you and starts the lecture.

DAVE: alright john hear me out  
DAVE: despite the appearance of complete nonchalant spontaneity ive actually given this several metric craptons of real serious thought  
DAVE: rummaging around in the back stacks of my soul for reference on all the strider code has to say on the matter  
DAVE: i could write a motherfucking dissertation and graduate with a honest to goddamn phd in gay studies from ellen degeneres university  
DAVE: all pimped out in rainbow flags with who knows what underneath  
DAVE: and sending that cap flying up to the sun with a flick of my wrist  
JOHN: uh, okay...  
DAVE: look anyway the point is that  
DAVE: whether or not karkat and i are gay dating  
DAVE: depends on what exactly you mean by dating  
DAVE: and also what exactly you mean by gay  
JOHN: oh, come ON, dave!  
JOHN: you and karkat are clearly both boys, and you are clearly both...  
JOHN: doing things that i would think boys who were dating would do.  
JOHN: i don't think it takes a phd to figure that out!  
DAVE: ok but like  
DAVE: you realize this is a dream right  
DAVE: that these are like just our  
DAVE: dream phantoms  
DAVE: or whatever the fuck karkat decided we were gonna call them  
DAVE: cant be dreamself because thats already a different thing  
DAVE: that our physical sleeping bodies are still tucked in tight sawing whole forests of logs like burly canadian lumberjacks  
JOHN: okay, but so what?  
JOHN: we are all still here together, right?  
JOHN: like, with all these... dream selves, dream bubbles and stuff...  
JOHN: is dreaming really that different from just being awake anymore?  
DAVE & hell yes  
KARKAT: HELL YES.  
JOHN: but how does it change --  
KARKAT: IT CHANGES EVERYTHING, JOHN.  
DAVE: well ok not literally everything  
DAVE: but yeah it changes a lot  
JOHN: like what?  
KARKAT: IT GIVES US PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY, YOU CLOD.  
JOHN: huh?! but --  
DAVE: shut up karkat i got this  
DAVE: fine john let me break it down for you some more  
DAVE: so look you just found us in the closet with vitamin k here feeling up my admittedly impressive lats and me with a pawful of succulent troll haunch  
DAVE: god theres just no way to sugar coat that but lets go ahead anyway and put it out on the table where we can all have a slice of it  
DAVE: its just seriously incriminating no matter how you play it  
DAVE: even i gotta admit that by the customary strider straight and narrow  
DAVE: that sounds _pretty_ gay  
JOHN: yes! exactly.  


Dave pauses and stares for a while, and you hate yourself a little bit more for every time you snickered with him at how "totally gay" some random piece of pop culture was. Not that often, and not lately; but just enough for the sense of it to stick. This was why you told Karkat you were "not a homosexual", so you wouldn't have to go to the effort of recoding the sharper, snappier word from a lazily generic, pastel-flavored insult to... whatever it was you thought Karkat might want to do with you. Or, it turns out, whatever he wants to do with Dave. Or... still do with you? As well? Maybe _instead,_ if it's hate gay dating, instead of regular gay dating, which these two are definitely already doing... oh _man._ Anyway guess what, it looks like you'll have to go to that effort anyway, in front of them both.

You wonder how much more _Dave_ hates himself now.

JOHN: i mean, uh, no offense!  
JOHN: that is just... _in fact_ what it is.  
JOHN: damn, this is just not coming out right!  
DAVE: nah were cool man  
DAVE: cause like i said  
DAVE: our regular meatcases are off having a snooze  
DAVE: so even if were doing something _pretty_ gay in our dreams  
DAVE: is it really _a hundred percent_ gay if maybe my subconscious feels like grabbing a big hunk of karkat rump now and then  
DAVE: im not even sure this isnt just a dream _about_ karkat  
DAVE: rather than a dream _with_ karkat if you catch my drift  
DAVE: you can do pretty weird shit in dreams and it seems totally normal  
DAVE: then you wake up and youre like wow that was kinda messed up haha  
DAVE: as long as we keep our mitts to ourselves while were awake  
DAVE: i dont see why it should count as being gay  
DAVE: like they say in the sports you know  
DAVE: no harm no foul  


Wow, you're still having trouble parsing whatever fine distinctions Dave is trying to make here. But that stare, even from behind his Ben Stiller shades, was enough to drag the "no offense" out of you, as you struggled to keep your balance upon the shifting sands of your shared vernacular. It doesn't sound like "no harm" at all. Not only is he trying to keep his relationship with Karkat secret from _his friends,_ it seems like he's somehow trying to keep it a secret from _himself._

JOHN: i, uh...  
JOHN: oh god.  
JOHN: dave, i don't... uh.  
DAVE: what  
DAVE: are we good bro  
DAVE: youre not thinking its contagious or anything are you  
JOHN: what? no! that's...  
JOHN: wow, it never even _occurred_ to me to ask that question.  
JOHN: like, how do you get to be gay? have you just always been?  
DAVE: thats like a whole other thesis im not remotely done writing yet  
DAVE: this is enough to chew on for now i dont want to spew half chewed feelings out of my mouth like a second place competitive pie eater  
JOHN: ew, gross!  
JOHN: look, never mind that for now! what i mean is...  
JOHN: it just sounds kind of... depressing?  
DAVE: how come  
JOHN: well, i mean, i don't quite get how... _this_ works yet.  
JOHN: i don't really know much about dating things in general, honestly.  
JOHN: but if you think it isn't real and doesn't count, why bother?  
JOHN: why not see it karkat's way, just regular dating between boys?  
JOHN: and like, do you not want to date karkat?  
DAVE: haha oh man what loaded questions  
DAVE: "regular dating between boys" thats rich  
DAVE: its just hells more complicated than you make it sound there  
JOHN: is it really? why does it have to be?  
JOHN: karkat, how does all this make you feel?  
KARKAT: HONESTLY? KIND OF RELIEVED, WHEN I FIRST HEARD IT.  
JOHN: wait, SERIOUSLY?!  
JOHN: i don't understand you two AT ALL.  
KARKAT: DAVE, I'M TRYING NOT TO LET EGBERT'S IDIOCY ABDUCT MY FIGURATIVE BLEATBEAST, BUT HE'S BEEN TUGGING AT IT FOR A WHILE NOW AND I'M SERIOUSLY STARTING TO LOSE MY GRIP ON IT AGAIN.  
KARKAT: CAN I JUST TRY TO EXPLAIN MYSELF, IN SIMPLE TERMS THAT I FERVENTLY HOPE EVEN HE CAN UNDERSTAND?  
JOHN: let him try, dave.  
JOHN: but i am super skeptical at this point.  
DAVE: alright hes all yours kark kent  
KARKAT: UGH, WE'VE GOT TO HAVE A TALK ABOUT YOUR SHITTY NICKNAMES FOR ME.  


That's a great point, Karkat. Dave is comfortable enough with dream!Karkat to come up with all these _terrible_ nicknames for him, but he's so _uncomfortable_ with the prospect of doing that _outside_ the dreamscape that he's tying himself in knots trying to rationalize it? Or are all the nicknames actually another sign of discomfort, to distance himself from a situation he doesn't feel he can really commit to?

Let's see if Karkat can explain it any better.

KARKAT: OKAY, JOHN. I CAN'T THINK OF A DIAGRAM FOR THIS SITUATION, SO I'M GOING TO LAY IT OUT FOR YOU AS BEST I CAN WITHOUT ONE.  
KARKAT: AS FOND AS I AM OF DAVE, HE HAS A WHOLE SEPARATE HALLWAY STORAGE RECESS WHERE HE KEEPS HIS FEDERAL FUCKING ISSUES SURROUNDING INTIMACY, SELF-IMAGE, QUADRANT ROMANCE...  
DAVE: im telling you its cozy as _fuck_ in there  
KARKAT: AND THIS WHOLE "GAY" BUSINESS.  
KARKAT: WHICH I STILL DON'T GET AS AN ALTERNIAN, WHICH YOU CLEARLY HAVE NO CLUE ABOUT DESPITE BEING A MALE HUMAN, AND WHICH INFURIATES ME EVERY GODDAMN TIME THE WORD MAKES CONTACT WITH MY AURICULAR SPONGE CLOTS.  
DAVE: we try to agree to disagree on that one but its a struggle sometimes  
KARKAT: I COULD WRITE IT OFF AS AN EARTH CULTURAL THING, BUT IT SOUNDS PRETTY FUCKED UP THE WAY DAVE RESPONDS TO IT, AND I'VE TOLD HIM THAT MORE TIMES THAN I CAN BE BOTHERED KEEPING TRACK.  
DAVE: and here he goes again wait for it  
KARKAT: WHY THE HELL SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT A CONCUPISCIENT PARTNER'S GENDER?!  
KARKAT: THAT'S ONE OF THE LEAST INTERESTING SELECTION CRITERIA FOR PAIR BONDING THAT I CAN IMAGINE, IN ANY QUADRANT.  
JOHN: yes! exactly! why the hell should we.  
KARKAT: WHAT ABOUT COMBAT PROWESS. RUTHLESSNESS. CUNNING. YOU KNOW.  
JOHN: or a sense of humor!  
KARKAT: YEAH, I GUESS. THAT TOO.  
JOHN: or like, awesome movie taste!  
KARKAT: FOR EXAMPLE.  


Dave shifts his weight nervously and shrinks a bit, giving you some serious side-eye. Maybe you got a little carried away with that last one? 

KARKAT: BUT JUST LIKE DAVE DOESN'T REALLY WANT TO ADMIT HE MIGHT BE ATTRACTED TO SOMEONE OF THE SAME GENDER, I DON'T REALLY WANT TO ADMIT I MIGHT BE ATTRACTED TO SOMEONE OF A DIFFERENT SPECIES.  
KARKAT: MUCH LESS A SPECIES THAT RECOGNIZES ONLY ONE INCREDIBLY LIMITED QUADRANT.  
KARKAT: AS EVEN A VAGUE POSSIBILITY, REALLY, GIVEN MY SERIOUSLY CHECKERED AND HYPOCRITICAL HISTORY ON THAT SCORE.  
JOHN: but you're admitting it to me right now!  
JOHN: in front of dave, even!  
DAVE: eh ive heard it all before keep going potassium  
KARKAT: "POTASSIUM"?!  
DAVE: got it from jade  
DAVE: light gray and likely to catch fire if i spill water on you  
KARKAT: AUGH, *WHATEVER*  
KARKAT: LOOK JOHN, OBVIOUSLY IN MY MORE HONEST MOMENTS WITH MYSELF, AND RIGHT NOW WITH YOU, I DO HAVE TO ADMIT THAT POSSIBILITY.  
KARKAT: BUT YOU KNOW WHAT KEEPS THAT FROM FEELING TOO THREATENING?  
KARKAT: BEING ABLE TO COMPARTMENTALIZE THOSE IMPULSES INTO A ZONE WHERE I CAN INDULGE THEM WITHOUT TORPEDOING ALL MY NORMAL DAILY INTERACTIONS WITH DAVE, AND EVERYONE ELSE ON THIS METEOR.  
KARKAT: IF WE TRIED TO CARRY ON LIKE THIS OPENLY, VRISKA WOULD GIVE ME EVERY BIT AS MUCH SHIT ABOUT MY HANGUPS AS ROSE WOULD GIVE DAVE ABOUT HIS.  
KARKAT: AND TEREZI WOULD BUST ON US *BOTH*. ABOUT EACH OTHER. GOD.  
DAVE: oh man would she ever  
KARKAT: AND WE'D PROBABLY BOTH JUST IMPLODE FROM THE SHEER FORCE OF SHAME PRESSURE APPLIED TO OUR RESPECTIVE NUGBONES.  
JOHN: i don't buy it. i bet they'd all be way happy for you!  
JOHN: but even if you're right, and i seriously doubt you are...  
JOHN: who even CARES about what they think!  
DAVE: sure john YOU try living on a tiny meteor with five other people and a juggalo for three goddamn years without caring what they think  
DAVE: who does the dishes is the least of your concerns  
JOHN: hey, my ship isn't THAT different!  
DAVE: come on its like the size of planet fucking jupiter  
DAVE: you could rattle around in that old space maraca for months and just avoid the shit out of bird me if you wanted  
DAVE: hell you got your whole planet if you get jade to shrink you down  
JOHN: shut up, i don't avoid either of them! we hang out ALL THE TIME.  
KARKAT: IT KILLS ME, BUT I THINK DAVE'S RIGHT ABOUT THIS.  
KARKAT: WE'RE LIVING IN A CLOSED SOCIAL ECOSYSTEM WHERE FRESH AIR IS SCARCE.  
JOHN: but seriously, what are they going to say?  
DAVE & dont wanna know  
KARKAT: DON'T WANNA KNOW.  
JOHN: argh, what they'd say isn't really even my point!  


** > John: Get to your point. **

JOHN: my point is, this is YOUR thing, you guys!  
JOHN: why don't you just do what YOU want!  
DAVE: uh john  
DAVE: i know you think youre trying to do us a favor but has it occurred to you that maybe this IS what we want right now  
JOHN: no! no, it has not.  
JOHN: if it was, there's no way you'd be this weird about it.  
JOHN: i think you and karkat should just live your damn lives together, and stop being such babies about liking each other!  
KARKAT: AND WHAT MAKES YOU THINK WE'RE CAPABLE OF THAT AT THIS TIME?!  
KARKAT: I'M JUST AS FUCKED UP AS DAVE IS! IN SIMILAR WAYS, EVEN!  
DAVE: hey speak for your damn self man  
DAVE: also john who are you calling a baby again  
KARKAT: I HAVE MY OWN PROBLEMS GETTING CLOSE TO PEOPLE, EVEN MY FRIENDS.  
KARKAT: I'M FUSSY AND VOLATILE. I RUN HOT AND COLD, RED AND BLACK.  
KARKAT: EVEN WITH DAVE. HE DOESN'T REALLY WANT TO ADMIT THIS EITHER, BUT WE HAVE OUR KISMETIC MOMENTS ON TOP OF OVERALL FLUSHED LEANINGS.  
DAVE: oh god not the kismeshit again  
KARKAT: RELAX, DAVE, I'M NOT OUT FOR YOUR BULGE ON THAT SCORE RIGHT NOW.  
KARKAT: BUT THAT DOESN'T CHANGE THE FACT THAT OUR DYNAMIC AT TIMES COULD BE TOTALLY CONSTRUED THAT WAY BY A REASONABLE ALTERNIAN OBSERVER.  
DAVE: like fine i could see how maybe some people like it extra rough  
DAVE: but how you get there from hating someone is still fucking weird  
DAVE: i mean is it like HATE hating or  
DAVE: i just  
DAVE: lol nope i still cant process that  
KARKAT: THE POINT, JOHN, IS THAT DAVE AND I ARE BOTH KIND OF BROKEN.  
DAVE: yeah ok i guess  
DAVE: we really kind of are  
KARKAT: SEE, WE BOTH ADMIT THAT. IN DREAMS, ANYWAY.  
KARKAT: NEITHER OF US CAN ADMIT IT WHEN WE'RE AWAKE YET.  
KARKAT: BUT WE EACH SORT OF GET THAT ABOUT EACH OTHER, AT A DEEP, CROSS-CULTURAL LEVEL.  
KARKAT: AND THAT HELPS.  
DAVE: anyway so like  
DAVE: thats why we have this pact  
JOHN: a pact?  
JOHN: WHAT pact?  
KARKAT: WHAT HAPPENS IN DREAMS STAYS IN DREAMS.  
DAVE: we come here and  
DAVE: you know  
DAVE: do whatever the fuck we want  
DAVE: and we hang out in the waking world of the meteor  
DAVE: where we definitely dont do those things  
DAVE: and dont talk about them either  
KARKAT: OR TALK ABOUT THE FACT THAT WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THEM.  
KARKAT: OR THAT WE AGREED NOT TO TALK ABOUT THEM OUTSIDE OF DREAMS.  
DAVE: and it just makes everything so much simpler  
KARKAT: SURE DOES.  
DAVE: yep  
KARKAT: TOTALLY.  


** > John: Can't believe what you're hearing. **

This has got to be the absolute dumbest bullshit you've heard the entire time you've known Dave and Karkat. Good lord. They need to know that.

JOHN: ...  
JOHN: ...  
JOHN: ...  
JOHN: oh my GOD.  
JOHN: i can't BELIEVE what i'm hearing!  
JOHN: this has got to be the absolute DUMBEST bullshit i've heard the entire time i've known either of you.  
DAVE: what no this is how its done  
KARKAT: IT'S A DELICATE EQUILIBRIUM, JOHN, DON'T FUCK WITH IT  
JOHN: we all just hid in the CLOSET from rose and kanaya!  
JOHN: IN A DREAM!  
JOHN: if the whole POINT of being in the dream is so you don't have to hide how you feel, what the ACTUAL FUCK was that supposed to be!  
DAVE & well, it's --  
KARKAT: WELL, IT'S --  
JOHN: ROSE and KANAYA, you guys!  
JOHN: fine, rose is kind of snarky and weird too sometimes, but dave, she's our friend and she's been through all the same shit we have!  
JOHN: and i don't really know kanaya that well, but karkat, why is she even on the damn meteor if she isn't your friend too!  
DAVE: actually  
DAVE: uh  
KARKAT: DO WE TELL HIM?  
JOHN: tell me WHAT?  
JOHN: you realize you can't just say that, you HAVE to tell me now!  
DAVE: so uh  
DAVE: rose and kanaya are  
DAVE: kind of a thing too  
KARKAT: LIKE, MATESPRITS.  
DAVE: yeah  
JOHN: ROSE and KANAYA are dating?!?!  
DAVE & ...  
KARKAT: ...  
DAVE & yeah  
KARKAT: YEAH  
JOHN: first of all, that's great! i am so happy for them.  
JOHN: because THAT IS HOW IT WORKS when you are friends with people.  
JOHN: i guess that means rose and i aren't getting married after all?  
JOHN: though it sounds like that might be for the best, that whole idea was making me nervous anyway.  
JOHN: BUT, more importantly... doesn't that mean THEY are gay too?  
DAVE: yyyyyeah  
JOHN: AND also an interspecies couple?  
KARKAT: YYYYYEAH.  
JOHN: are they happy together?  
DAVE & ...  
KARKAT: ...  
JOHN: ANSWER ME, POOPLORDS  
DAVE & *sigh* yeah  
KARKAT: *SIGH* YEAH  
JOHN: do either of you judge them AT ALL for ANY of that?!  
DAVE: no way thatd be the worst  
KARKAT: GOD, THAT WOULDN'T MAKE ANY FUCKING SENSE.  
JOHN: YOU'RE RIGHT, dave, it WOULD.  
JOHN: YOU'RE RIGHT, karkat, it WOULDN'T.  
JOHN: uh, hold on.  
JOHN: WOULD... be the worst, and would NOT make sense. check.  
JOHN: so why do you two spend all this time moaning and complaining about things you're afraid to do in your OWN FUCKING DREAMS, and yet it's JUST FINE for them to do the EXACT SAME things IN THE REAL WORLD?  
DAVE: no thats totally different  
KARKAT: IT'S COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.  
JOHN: HOW?!?!  


Dave doesn't even skip a beat in saying

DAVE: come on john  
DAVE: theyre girls  


\-- what?

DAVE: like they are  
DAVE: actually objectively hot  
DAVE: chicks can get away with this stuff  
DAVE: were just a dumpster fire in comparison dudes werent meant for this  


Girls? Oh! Haha, yes of course, you knew there had to be a perfectly rational explanation WAIT NO THAT'S STILL DUMB. Ordinarily you would plead ignorance and cede the floor on this kind of matter to Dave, but you honestly don't feel like doing that right now. Who knows, there might be real differences, you don't care, all you know is that he's grasping at straws without any convincing justification. You give him your best speechless appalled expression, but he's not backing down. So you turn to Karkat for backup, and

KARKAT: ALSO, KANAYA'S A JADEBLOOD.  


\-- wait, _"also"?!_

KARKAT: SO EVEN BEING IN AN OPENLY CONCUPISCIENT RELATIONSHIP IN THE FIRST PLACE IS ALREADY SO SUBVERSIVE THAT NO OTHER CONSIDERATIONS CARRY MUCH WEIGHT AFTER THAT.  
KARKAT: I MEAN, NOT THAT I REALLY GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE HEMOSPECTRUM.  
KARKAT: OR MORE OF A FUCK ABOUT IT THAN IT TOOK TO NOT GET CULLED, ANYWAY.  


Oh my god.

Okay Karkat that is NOT HELPING.

JOHN: first of all, dave, that doesn't make ANY sense!  
DAVE: what do you mean its just  
DAVE: self evident  
JOHN: and karkat...  
KARKAT: WHAT HE SAID.  


It's hard to blame Dave for his discomfort, since you understand where it comes from. You feel kind of lucky to know so much less about girls and dating and being gay as Dave, because the knowledge clearly isn't helping him and you wonder if you wouldn't just have to unlearn it all anyway. Heavy lies the mantle of coolness.

It's much easier to blame Karkat, whom you haven't known nearly as long. Why doesn't he know better? Here is someone who could teach Dave how to date boys and not hate himself, and instead he seems to hate himself just as much in the exact same way! You're itching to sock him right in the kisser.

Actually, you're itching to go rolling down the hallway with him in a cloud of animated violence again. You don't feel like you got that right the first time; you want a do-over. You could swear he was holding out on you, gnawing just enough to be infuriating without actually being dangerous.

** > John: Pick a fight. **

All right, this prick is TOAST. Okay, sticks? Heat 'em up.

JOHN: i actually kind of hate you for saying all that just now?!  
KARKAT: UH, WHAT?  
KARKAT: OH.  
KARKAT: HAHA, WELL  
DAVE: john what the fuck are you doing  
JOHN: because, like. obviously dave is having a hard time!  
JOHN: dating a gay space alien is hard, and nobody understands.  
JOHN: i am definitely feeling pretty weird myself here!  


Bang 'em hard. Ready?

JOHN: but i thought, and i don't know WHY i thought this before, that as an alien you might be, you know, GOOD for him.  
DAVE: dude that was just space racist as hell  
KARKAT: WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! HOW AM I NOT GOOD FOR HIM?  
JOHN: i don't know, like you'd have some useful outside perspective, being from a completely different culture?!  
JOHN: not like, AGREEING with him on stupid bullshit excuses when maybe you should be CHALLENGING him on it!  


Let's show this phantasmagoric sonovabitch how we do things downtown.

You're edging closer to Karkat now, staring him down and daring him to do something about it. Your laser gaze is burning a hole in his grumpy cover; he can't quite meet it, swiveling back towards Dave, or the ceiling, or six inches to the side of your head, or basically anywhere else that promises some kind of shallow shelter from that focused antagonism that's slowly boiling him. He raises his voice to prop up the part you've almost already blown over.

KARKAT: AND WHAT THE HELL'S WRONG WITH AGREEING WITH HIM ON SOME THINGS?  
KARKAT: ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT THINGS ABOUT HOW OUR RELATIONSHIP WORKS!  
JOHN: oh, you're in a RELATIONSHIP now? congratulations!  
KARKAT: WAIT, SHUT UP!  
DAVE: come on john let up hes cool were totally cool  
DAVE: everything is just frosty as  
DAVE: hes good for me look me in the eye and say he isnt good for me  
JOHN: whoooaaa, careful dave, are you saying this all might MATTER?  
JOHN: might want to slow down before it actually COUNTS or something!  
DAVE: no just  
DAVE: ugh  
DAVE: fuck  
DAVE: john when did you finally grow a sarcasm bone  
DAVE: like i get what youre doing here but seriously quit it  
KARKAT: LEAVE US ALONE, EGBERT! DON'T MAKE ME --  
JOHN: make you WHAT, karkat?  
JOHN: yell at me some more? oh man, i'm so stoked!  
JOHN: call me some half-assed name you made up just now? bring it!  
JOHN: take me for another pleasant evening roll down the hallway? it's a fucking DATE, spades boy!  


Oooh, _that_ one got to him. The flue opens up, steam whistles through Karkat's ears and the furnace is open for business again. He's squaring off, baring his teeth, lowering his stance and getting ready to spring again.

** > John: Force the issue. **

DAVE: dammit john will you stand down already  
KARKAT: DO *NOT* TEST ME, JOHN, I'M WARNING YOU!  
JOHN: this is NOT a test! i am DONE playing around!  
JOHN: if you want to play around and not be serious, go talk to dave!  
DAVE: _what the fuck_  
KARKAT: WHY, YOU --  
JOHN: you know, if none of THAT counted, then i bet THIS won't either!  


And with that, you grab Karkat by the dream lapels, pull him straight in and plant a big fat one right on his lips.


	4. Chapter 4

Wait, you what? Dude, your lips are squashed right up against Karkat's and he's kind of twitching in what you hope is surprise? He's stiff as a board and you don't really know what you're supposed to be doing so you let go of him.

DAVE & what the _fuck_ john  
KARKAT: WHAT THE _FUCK,_ JOHN  
JOHN: oh damn, SORRY, i screwed that up!  
JOHN: that DEFINITELY didn't count. let's try AGAIN!  


You want a do-over on that one too. This time you actually bowl Karkat over in as close an approximation to the way he did to you before as you can manage, and _then_ plant a big fat one right on his lips. It still isn't working, ugh, you're the worst at this even in dreams where you could just dream that you're better at it, but no -- until Karkat snarls,

KARKAT: DID YOU MEAN *THIS*, YOU INEFFECTUAL LIMP FISH?!  


flips you over and tilts his head to the side to get your noses out of the way. Wow, that's _way_ better.

JOHN: mm! mmhmm!  
KARKAT: MMRNGF!  


You're not going to let him get the upper hand, though, and the easiest way to distract him while you turn the tables again is to shove your tongue into his mouth. He doesn't let go, but loses enough of his grip in alarm at this new form of aggression that you can push off with your right foot to turn you both another half-revolution. He's on his back now, haha, you're gonna shell this crab OW FUCK HE JUST BIT YOUR LIP, FUCK FUCK FUCK WHAT DID HE DO THAT FOR

You squeak in a really undudely manner and disengage, which gives Karkat the opening he needs to toss you off into a battered heap in the corner. You're both gasping for breath, but as you drag yourself upright and gingerly rub your head where it hit the wall, you see that he's looking at you with wide new eyes. He doesn't know what to make of this any more --

KARKAT: WOW, JOHN.  
KARKAT: SOMEHOW I'M DISGUSTED AND ALSO KIND OF IMPRESSED AT THE SAME TIME.  
KARKAT: YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING WITH PITCH SOLICITATIONS ANY BETTER THAN FLUSHED SOLICITATIONS.  
KARKAT: HONESTLY YOU'RE KIND OF A ROMANTIC TRAIN WRECK.  
KARKAT: BUT... DAMN.  
KARKAT: YOU PUT SOME SERIOUS EFFORT INTO THAT?  
KARKAT: MAYBE I WAS WRONG ABOUT YOU ALL ALONG.  


\-- than you.

DAVE: ?!?!?!

Or Dave, whose jaw is scraping the pavement and whose brow has hit the rafters in an even rarer display, for him, of total dumbfuckingfoundment. A rapid succession of micro-expressions is projected onto this canvas, the emotional equivalent of line noise, as if his brain is running an old-school 56k modem that got cut off mid-upload and is desperately trying to reconnect with his face.

The impact of what you just did hits you like a killer asteroid. You just... _hate-snogged_ Dave's sort-of-boyfriend... _in front of him..._ why again? To make a point? You know that (1) homoerotic overtures, (2) caliginous overtures, and (3) overtures towards your best bro's semi-committed troll-with-benefits all contravene distinct articles of the Strider code, and you blew away all three of them at once. What kind of rhetorical own goal did you just score? Fuck, once the emotional slot machine winds down it's gonna come up all skulls and crossbones and he's gonna _murder_ you. And after he's murdered you, he'll toss your carcass to Karkat to kill all over again. And then they'll jump on the pieces together till they're mush. And what's worse, after they've double-killed you they probably aren't even going to be your friends anymore.

Back to the point. What point were you making? You just kind of got swept up in the moment, but this started by trying to plow through the six-foot-thick wall of denial these two have built around themselves. If Dave _really_ doesn't care about Karkat, he'll probably just laugh and write it all off as Egbert Shenanigans. If Karkat _really_ doesn't care about Dave, he ought to show no remorse about stoking the kismetic flames even higher. You see now that this is a brilliant ploy in the guise of playing dumb. If you knew the original Trojan Horse wasn't a cartoon advertising mascot for latex condoms, you might have compared your gambit to it. Actually, the other way might work too.

But if Dave and Karkat _do_ care about each other... well, you're banking on their goodwill to give you a proper burial, because it'll be a Just death for you. It's a price you're willing to pay for showing them you have had it up to here with their excuses.

There's more to it, though, that isn't purely, or even particularly, altruistic. You taste more blood in your mouth with each throb of your newly split bottom lip, but also something else, sharp and sour like a pickled lemon, gross and foreign and delicious and addictive. You had been turned off of kisses by Rose's cold, dead lips, the only previous frame of reference you had for what a kiss should feel like. Compare that with Karkat's lips, thin and ravenous, and his tongue, slippery and muscular and angry, that kissed back like a firing squad.

Would kissing Vriska have felt or tasted like that?

You're still vainly trying to imagine the answer to that hypothetical when Dave regains the faculty of speech.

DAVE: uhhh  
KARKAT: OH SHIT.  
KARKAT: DAVE, FUCK, I'M SORRY, WHAT WAS I THINKING?!  
KARKAT: HE JUST, ARGH! YOU SAW WHAT JOHN DID!  


What?! That fucking _coward._

JOHN: hey, asshole, it wasn't just me!  
JOHN: i mean, wait, that means it WAS me? but not JUST... dammit.  
DAVE: yeah uh  
DAVE: that sure as hell was a thing i saw  
DAVE: and am not gonna unsee anytime soon  
DAVE: whatever it was  
JOHN: oh MAN!  
JOHN: dave, look, i --  


By now Karkat's left eye is bugging out farther than his right, which you're pretty sure it shouldn't be doing in anyone who isn't about to have a stroke. His hands are clawed up around two invisible globes of shame in the air in front of him and he's sort of kneading them as he splutters into the empty space. Based on his spluttering it sounds like he's caught up to you.

KARKAT: AHAHAHA, THE IRONY! *DRAMATIC* IRONY, I MEAN!  
KARKAT: DAVE, THIS WHOLE TIME YOU'VE BEEN WORRIED ABOUT ME SECRETLY BEING HATECRUSHED OUT ON JOHN, AND IT TURNS OUT *HE* HAS A THING FOR *ME*!  
KARKAT: GOD DAMMIT JOHN, I THOUGHT WE WERE IN THE CLEAR!  
JOHN: we WERE, until you started being a huge JERK about everything!  
KARKAT: OH, CAN IT! THAT BLACK AFFECTION CAME COMPLETELY OUT OF THE BLUE, BY WHICH I MEAN YOUR PANTS, AND YOU FUCKING KNOW IT.  
JOHN: oh yeah, then how do you explain this ENORMOUS HICKEY on my shoulder?!  
KARKAT: WHAT, *THAT*? THAT HAD *NOTHING* TO DO WITH THIS WHATSOEVER.  
DAVE: uh   
JOHN: if you would stop being such a TERRIBLE LIAR, we wouldn't be HAVING this problem and we could get on to more interesting stuff!  
KARKAT: NO, YOU KNOW WHAT, I DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN BY THAT.  
KARKAT: EITHER BY IMPUGNING MY HONESTY, OR BY "MORE INTERESTING STUFF".  
KARKAT: I'VE HAD ENOUGH TURMOIL IN MY QUADRANTS FOR ONE BUBBLE DREAM.  
KARKAT: LOOK AT DAVE MELTING DOWN HERE, HE'S PRACTICALLY LOSING HIS MIND.  
KARKAT: WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF POOR DAVE?  
DAVE: about that  
JOHN: why are you just throwing me under the bus like this?!  
KARKAT: I MIGHT ASK YOU THE SAME THING!  
KARKAT: YOU ARE SO OFF LIMITS FOR ME. THE LIMITS WERE ALL BACK THERE IN THE LAST HIVE CLUSTER AND YOU NEED A BUS TICKET JUST TO GET ON THE PROPER SIDE OF THEM AGAIN.  
JOHN: so you weren't "wrong about me all along" after all?!  
KARKAT: I MEANT YOUR CAPACITY FOR BLACKROM, NOT WHETHER IT WAS A GOOD IDEA.  
KARKAT: OR WHETHER I WAS NECESSARILY INTERESTED.  
JOHN: ah-HA, so that IS how spades are supposed to go?!  
DAVE: guys look  
KARKAT: NO, JUST STOP.  
KARKAT: DAVE DOESN'T DO MULTIPLE PARTNERS, HE DOESN'T DO BLACKROM --  
JOHN: haha, see, so he IS your partner, SUCK it!  
KARKAT: AND HE SURE AS HELL DOESN'T DO THE COMBINATION OF THOSE THINGS WITH HIS BEST HUMAN FRIEND FROM BEFORE THIS MORTIFYING MATURATION FRACAS.  
KARKAT: WHO HE IS NO DOUBT FERVENTLY HOPING HE HASN'T "TURNED GAY" SOMEHOW.  
JOHN: dammit karkat, quit hiding behind dave!  
JOHN: how about you let him speak for HIMSELF here, and start speaking for YOURSELF for a change?!  
DAVE: yeah _that would be rad actually_  


Dave's voice is quiet and sounds a bit distracted, but carries enough pique to cut through the infinite loop of recriminations and get you both listening again. You're glad because you were running out of interrobangs. What's the troll word for those things? Probably something like "shout noodles". You just made that up right now but it sounds pretty convincing.

DAVE: god  
DAVE: just  
DAVE: ok im temporarily suspending my ban on half chewed feelings cause this motherfucker barely fits into my mouth  
DAVE: omfg if thats not what she said what is she even saying  
DAVE: or forget her what am i even saying  
DAVE: im counting on both of you to just forget i said that pronto for supremely embarrassing and totally inadvertent gay factor  
DAVE: despite the fact that everything about this entire situation is made from 1000 percent recycled flying rainbow unicorn feces  
DAVE: lets take a deep breath here and cut through the winged horse shit  
DAVE: *gaaaasp*  
DAVE: *SIIIIGH*  
DAVE: ok cool  
DAVE: uh  
DAVE: right  
DAVE: here goes  


He sits there for a bit longer in silence. Miraculously, nobody says anything. Both you and Karkat are here for Dave, and that slender thread of commonality suffices to hold a truce together while he gets his thoughts in order.

DAVE: so i  
DAVE: ill come out and say i have no idea whats going on here so  
DAVE: im gonna just recap the obvious and hope it all comes together  
DAVE: we all fortuitously dream into the same bubble  
DAVE: karkat and i ditch john on impulse and go off to run around some bases in the janitors closet  
DAVE: john finds us _way_ faster than i would have thought possible given how fuck deep were buried in our collective subconscious  
DAVE: he just swan dives into the goddamn haystack and is all like  
DAVE: "oh cool look a couple of needles"  
DAVE: im sure rose would spout some bullshit about jungian archetypes or the heros journey or whatever cause she doesnt know when to quit and would be hella stoked if said journey ended in a sweaty cupboard  
DAVE: me and karkat are predictably chagrined and beg for mercy  
DAVE: does john gtfo yelling no homo at the top of his lungs  
DAVE: no  
DAVE: does he have the decency and presence of chill to shut the door again and let us carry on as before  
DAVE: nope  
DAVE: is he weirded out by karkat completely flipping his spades at him  
DAVE: no of course not because this is john were talking about  
DAVE: does he draw the line at interrogating us about our sexual histories and preferences  
DAVE: youd think that would be a fine line but nah  
DAVE: he gets torqued because karkat and i are insufficiently all the fuck over each other in the presence of the rest of the meteor population  
DAVE: and to _prove_ that we should just gay marry each other already  
DAVE: he  
DAVE: lets see if i got this straight  
DAVE: he pops a huge hate boner and fucking _jumps_ karkat  
DAVE: who looks to me like nothing so much as _totally into it_ near as i can tell  
DAVE: which brings us to the present moment  
DAVE: perhaps ive taken some minimal amount of poetic license here but have i got any of the material facts incorrect  
JOHN: well, uh...  
KARKAT: UH.  
JOHN: *sigh*  
JOHN: no, not really.  
KARKAT: FUCK, JOHN, ARE YOU REALLY NOT GOING TO CONTEST *ANY* OF THAT?!  
JOHN: why, are you?  
KARKAT: ...  
DAVE: karkat  
KARKAT: URNGH.  
KARKAT: NO, I GUESS NOT. IT ISN'T WORTH IT.  
KARKAT: THE WHOLE CHAIN OF EVENTS IS TOTALLY ABSURD.  
KARKAT: I WOULDN'T BELIEVE IT IF I HADN'T BEEN RIGHT FUCKING HERE AND WATCHED THE ENTIRE CATASTROPHE UNFOLD IN SLOW MOTION, LIKE THE TREMBLING PETALS OF A STARVING CARNIVOROUS FLOWER ANTICIPATING ITS FIRST MEAT OF THE NIGHT.  
JOHN: pffffthahahaha!  
DAVE: holy shit karkat did you hear what you just said  
KARKAT: SHUT THE FUCK UP, BULGELORDS.  
KARKAT: I MIGHT STILL CONTEST ANY PARTICULAR CAUSAL INTERPRETATION YOU DECIDE TO PLACE ON THE FACTS, BUT WE'LL GET TO THAT ONCE WE COME UP WITH ONE THAT HOLDS UP TO THE FAINTEST RAY OF DAYLIGHT.  
DAVE: cool  
DAVE: so  
DAVE: we got that at least  
JOHN: dave, are you...  
JOHN: are you really mad at us?  


He stops to consider that. Either he's not mad, or he's so mad he doesn't even know where to begin. You and Karkat hold your breath, until Dave's impassive visage finally cracks into an even more sheepish grin than before.

DAVE: heh  
DAVE: how could i stay mad at these faces john  
DAVE: no actually i  
DAVE: im gonna go way out on the gay limb here  
DAVE: and possibly saw it right off behind me in saying  
DAVE: that was  
DAVE: kinda hot?  


You and Karkat stop to consider that.

You look at each other. You look at Dave. Dave looks at you both.

And all three of you explode in raucous, unreconstructed gaiety.

JOHN & AHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!  
DAVE & AHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!  
KARKAT: AHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!  
JOHN: ahaha, oh god!  
JOHN: dave, i was so sure our friendship was ruined!  
KARKAT: PFFT, HAHA, SO WAS I!  
KARKAT: BUT I GUESS WE CAN ALL RELAX AND GO BACK TO BUSINESS AS USUAL NOW!  
DAVE: no seriously you guys it was hot  


That stops the laughter right away. You shut your squawk gapers and stay put, because he apparently isn't done.

DAVE: so uh im  
DAVE: ok let me put it this way  
DAVE: this is still obviously a dream were all in and maybe thats different from real life and maybe it isnt  
DAVE: i think the jurys still out on what dream bubble shit means anyway  
DAVE: but i gotta say  
DAVE: john got me real good  
DAVE: i confess i was jealous as all hell for like ten seconds  
DAVE: that is until i realized that the very fact of being jealous had just knifed all my dubious protestations of straightness in the back  
DAVE: and after that the jealousy just seemed dumb too  
DAVE: because seriously who would any of us leave the other two for  
DAVE: were like  
DAVE: the gay trifecta  
DAVE: all three majestic horses busting across the line at once with glistening coats and heaving flanks and maybe some wings and horns  
DAVE: if id thought to bet on those mofos i couldve been rolling in dough  
DAVE: sure i broke the lohac boonbank but who gives a fuck that was just a stupid quest thing and not a real gamble   
DAVE: there is no way i can look john in the eye after all that and say karkat isnt good for me  
DAVE: it was a stupid as hell plan that nobody thought was a plan  
DAVE: and probably didnt really even need planning  
DAVE: but damn if it didnt just solve something  
DAVE: so thats weird  


Wait, _what?_

It looks like your impulsive plan-that-wasn't-a-plan got you more than you bargained for here. Is he suggesting that you... _all date each other?_

Uh, wow! That sounds _bonkers_. You can't think of a single movie in your entire library where something like this happens at the end. The formula is so well-trodden it might as well be paved: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. You knew you were in unconventional territory here, but you thought at most it would be boy meets boy, boy is threatened with loss of boy, boy gets boy. Not boy meets boy meets boy _and they all get each other._

How would that work? Dave gets Karkat, and Karkat gets Dave, which is definitely one of the more positive outcomes you envisioned. Even though you don't know what Dave sees in Karkat, Karkat clearly sees the same thing in Dave, and it looks like the walls might be coming down a bit. But... does Karkat also get _you_? and vice versa? Do you need, like, a schedule or something to figure that out? Is this what the quadrant system is actually supposed to handle? You'd get Karkat in the spades quadrant, you think, but that's the one that weirds Dave out, right? And does this mean you also get _Dave_ , even though humans don't have a quadrant system? What quadrant would you two be in? Does this make any more sense in Alternian romance, which you still only have the vaguest understanding of, than it does in Earth human romance?

You don't understand this at all, but... you're kind of curious about it! But since it doesn't look like any of you _really_ understand what's going on (except maybe Karkat, but you're not going to just hand him the privilege of being smug at you about anything like this), it's probably okay for you to keep going along for the ride.

Dave regards his shoelaces fixedly before continuing on to another unexpected pronouncement.

DAVE: heres something even weirder  
DAVE: karkat i only ever heard about the spades stuff purely in the abstract or  
DAVE: like watching vriska and terezi  
DAVE: actually never mind i legit have no idea what their deal is  
DAVE: i bet they dont know what their deal is either even though its theirs  
DAVE: hell i still dont know what our deal is but i gotta admit its a deal  
DAVE: anyway like  
DAVE: i had no idea how something like hate could be a basis for dating  
DAVE: like in practice among actual people that arent bad romcom characters  
DAVE: and im not really sure either thats where yall are going  
DAVE: maybe thats something that gets lost in translation to humanspeak  
DAVE: but you guys have  
DAVE: idk  
DAVE: john is it fucked up for me to say you and karkat have some kind of energy on a wavelength even i can pick up  
DAVE: and not just like  
DAVE: gay energy  
DAVE: like i get that maybe gayness and hate dating arent such big deals to you but theyre kinda rewriting my brain here so  
DAVE: i could kind of use a sign from you that its all cool  


Haha, wow!

Is he still talking? No, he's stopped now, and looked up from his shoes to meet your eyes. You're on, limpfish!

JOHN: oh! uh.  
JOHN: gosh, dave!  
JOHN: i'm still kind of trying to figure it out too!  
JOHN: but no, i don't think it's messed up.  
JOHN: it's weird, but not like, _scary_ weird.  
JOHN: and karkat *is*, like... _really super annoying._  
JOHN: way more annoying in dream-person than he ever was online.  
JOHN: but like, attractively? is, uh, is that really a thing?  
KARKAT: YES IT'S A THING YOU VACANT-PANNED WOOLBEAST.  
JOHN: i wasn't ASKING you, buttmunch.  
KARKAT: NOOKSTAIN.  
JOHN: assmonkey.  
KARKAT: TURDGOBLIN.  
JOHN: i meant _can it be a thing for humans,_ jegus!  
DAVE: hahaha  
DAVE: yeah john uh  
DAVE: looks like its a thing  


He's starting to grin again, and his color's coming back. It looks like he's into it! Like he's taking a solicitous interest in your hate dating. Is this what you want? You'd better confirm.

JOHN: i mean, do you have a problem with it?  
JOHN: especially if karkat is your, like, dream troll or something?  
KARKAT: OH GOD, NO, STOP. LET'S CULL THAT ONE RIGHT IN THE NUB.  
DAVE: pfftthaha _dream troll_ oh lord  
JOHN: come on, i was being serious!  
DAVE: ahahahaha fuck you guys this is perfect  
KARKAT: JOHN, YOU JUST TOOK ME STRAIGHT TO SCHOOL FOR HIDING ANY POTENTIAL INTEREST I MIGHT HAVE IN YOU BEHIND MY IMPRESSION THAT DAVE WOULD DISAPPROVE.  
KARKAT: FOR SOMEONE WHO'S SUCH A BLOCKHEAD ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE, THAT WAS A REMARKABLY SMART OBSERVATION.  
JOHN: oh! well, DAMN STRAIGHT it was.  
DAVE: AHAHAHAhahaha no not really  
JOHN: what! it was smart if it worked, right?  
DAVE: sure it worked but that doesnt make it damn straight  
DAVE: pffftsnkrttkrrk  
JOHN: uuuuuuggghhh!  
KARKAT: HOLY FUCK, THE THINGS I PUT UP WITH FOR YOU, DAVE.  
DAVE: anyway no you were right i totally disapproved  
DAVE: but a lot of that was because i thought _hed_ disapprove  
DAVE: and you can see how that turned out  
KARKAT: YES, TO MY THOROUGH AND ENDURING REGRET, I CAN SEE EXACTLY HOW IT TURNED OUT.  
KARKAT: SO JOHN, I'M NOT LETTING YOU OFF THAT HOOK EITHER NOW.  
JOHN: ugh, fine!  
KARKAT: DAVE, CAN I JUST POINT OUT THIS IS A TOTALLY DIFFERENT QUADRANT --  
DAVE: yeah sure  
KARKAT: OR *WOULD BE*, ANYWAY --  
DAVE: whatever man  
KARKAT: AND IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT --  
DAVE: haha fine i get it i get it  
DAVE: god i dont even care at this point  
DAVE: youre such disaster hatelovers and i dont care  


Dave reaches out to hug you both, one on each arm, with -- for the first time -- what looks like a relaxed, if tired, smile on his face.

DAVE: its just so great to have you both here  



	5. Chapter 5

And so, that's how you all ended up in this nest.

You picked a different closet, a more spacious one this time, and lined the floor with couch cushions raided from a conveniently placed memory of one of the less popular lounge areas. Karkat's husktop is perched on one of the lower shelves, loaded up with one of Dave's mellower electronic playlists; the glow from its screen is your only illumination.

You and Dave are propped up against the wall, side by side, as bros should be. Karkat is laid out across you both, with his head in Dave's lap, allowing him to accept head scratches from Dave while retaining the ability to elbow you in the side if you overstep any of the boundaries still being negotiated, or really, just because he feels like it. His lower half is comfortably supported by one of the cushions. The closet door is open, but barricaded by more cushions with a spare blanket draped across them to create an enclosed, safe subspace.

It's just cozy as fuck in here.

DAVE: haha god i still can't get over the look on karkats face  
DAVE: when you just  
DAVE: fuck  
DAVE: like be honest were you planning to jump him the whole time or did that idea come to you in some flash of perverse inspiration  
DAVE: from like the muse of rage whispering in your ear or something  
JOHN: i really wasn't! i just sort of... went with it?  
JOHN: i don't think i had any idea what i was doing until it was too late!  
KARKAT: SURE, JOHN. "TOO LATE." YOU *WOULD* DESCRIBE IT THAT WAY.  
JOHN: well, it's not like i regret it! not that much, anyway.  
DAVE: you know im gonna punch you if you start regretting it right  
KARKAT: DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT, DAVE, THAT'S *MY* FUCKING JOB.  
DAVE: hey i didnt sign away all my punching rights to this blue nerd when i said you guys could do your side hustle  
DAVE: no way is that a reasonable thing to ask of a dude  


Dave gives you a brotherly knock in the arm. Not as hard as Karkat would have, for sure, but enough to make his presence, and claim, felt.

KARKAT: IT'S NOT A FUCKING "SIDE HUSTLE", DAVE.  
KARKAT: IT'S PURSUIT OF A DISTINCT AND TOTALLY NATURAL ROMANCE QUADRANT, WHICH FOR SOME REASON YOU DON'T THINK DESERVES ITS OWN CATEGORY.  
DAVE: look i can see its a thing  
DAVE: and i can see its for egbert  
DAVE: and it evidently sates some deep seated hunger for rolling around on the floor with some goofball in enchanted track pants  
DAVE: should we try that like is that something youre into  
KARKAT: NO! IT'S...  
KARKAT: THAT WOULD BE WEIRD. WITH YOU.  
KARKAT: HONESTLY, I... UGH.  
DAVE: what  
KARKAT: NOT WITH EGBERT HERE.  
DAVE: hahaha ok you HAVE to tell us now  
KARKAT: NO, FUCK YOU, IT'S EMBARRASSING!  
DAVE: nah this sounds important im not gonna let it drop that easily  
JOHN: spill it, karkat, or i'll wring it out of you!  
KARKAT: NO YOU WON'T, YOU FESTERING AAAAARRGHHGH FUCK OKAY OKAY GOD STOP!!!  


It turns out Karkat responds well to Indian burns.

KARKAT: I HAD... KIND OF...  
KARKAT: NNRRGH.  
KARKAT: I HAD HOPED THAT MAYBE, IF I WORKED OUT ALL MY CALIGINOUS DESIRES WITH JOHN...  
KARKAT: MAYBE DAVE AND I COULD HAVE... A MORE NORMAL MATESPRITSHIP.  
KARKAT: ONE WITHOUT ALL THESE WEIRD PITCH VACILLATIONS WE HAVE SOMETIMES.  
DAVE: if you mean the parts where i call you out on your dumb shit  
DAVE: thats not gonna stop  
KARKAT: IT SHOULDN'T BE YOUR *JOB*, DAVE!  
DAVE: the hell its not  
DAVE: how did you get to be the one who says what my job is  
JOHN: wait... i've been calling you out on your dumb shit, like, the ENTIRE time i've been in this bubble with you.  
KARKAT: DEAR GOD, EGBERT ACTUALLY *UNDERSTOOD* SOMETHING HAVING TO DO WITH SENSIBLE ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS!  
KARKAT: ALTHOUGH I'M STILL KIND OF ASTOUNDED *HE'S* THE ONE DOING IT.  
DAVE: wait i thought it was about hate  
DAVE: whats the hate angle john since you seem to be the spades whisperer  
JOHN: uh, i don't think it's really hate, as such? --  
KARKAT: OF COURSE IT'S HATE, JOHN! FUCK, DO YOU REALLY NOT KNOW WHAT HATE FEELS LIKE?!  
JOHN: duuuh, of course i know what hate feels like!  
JOHN: it's like... where the only option is to kill them.  
JOHN: like what i felt for jack, after he killed --  
KARKAT: THAT'S *PLATONIC* HATE! IT'S COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!  
KARKAT: SWEET SUFFERER'S SAKE, THE EMOTIONAL DYNAMIC RANGE OF YOUR SPECIES IS SO STUNTED IT'S A WONDER YOU HAVE RELATIONSHIPS AT ALL!  
DAVE: dude humans arent like enmity eskimos we dont have 73 words for hate  
DAVE: your thing kinda seems more like competition  
DAVE: and like if you kill the competition then its gone  
DAVE: and you dont get the fun of beating them again  
DAVE: or the motivation to not get your sorry ass handed to you next time  
JOHN: yeah, that's pretty close actually!  
KARKAT: UGH, I CAN'T *BELIEVE* YOU TWO!  
DAVE: what  
DAVE: am i wrong  
KARKAT: NO!!!  
DAVE: youre just pissed cause egbert agrees with me huh  
DAVE: hahaha welp that sort of signs and seals it then  
JOHN: pfffft, he's so transparent it is actually kind of sad!  
KARKAT: STOP CONDESCENDING TO ME AND LET ME GET A WORD IN ABOUT MY OWN SPECIES'S GODDAMN ROMANCE SYSTEM!!!  
KARKAT: YES, THERE IS AN ELEMENT OF RIVALRY OR ONE-UPSMANSHIP, AND AN EXPECTATION FOR YOUR KISMESIS TO IMPROVE THEMSELVES AND TRY THEIR HARDEST TO BEST YOU.  
KARKAT: CALLING PEOPLE ON SHIT IS CONSISTENT WITH PALE BEHAVIOR TOO, BUT WITH A DIFFERENT MOTIVATION, AND USUALLY IN PRIVATE.  
KARKAT: JOHN HAS JUST BEEN LOOKING OUT FOR YOU, BUT HE'S BEEN TRYING TO SHAME ME INTO BEING LESS HYPOCRITICAL FOR YOUR BENEFIT.  
JOHN: yeah, i... yeah! that is basically what i've been doing.  
KARKAT: OF COURSE IT IS, I'M JUST OBJECTIVELY CORRECT ABOUT THIS.  
KARKAT: AND OF COURSE IT TAKES A ROMANCE EXPERT TO EXPLAIN YOUR OWN FUCKING PLAN TO YOU.  
JOHN: hey, i think i'm doing pretty well at this for a human, jeez!  
DAVE: huh  
DAVE: ok well that all sort of computes  
DAVE: the part im having trouble with is  
DAVE: why is that sexual  
JOHN: ...  
KARKAT: ...  
DAVE: what  
JOHN: dave, if you really have to ask, then, uhhh...  
KARKAT: YOU'RE PROBABLY NOT GOING TO GET IT.  
JOHN: yeah, pretty much.  
DAVE: fuck it i give up  


This appears to be only a temporary issue. It takes Dave about two seconds to return to an earlier line of inquiry.

DAVE: but like john  
DAVE: have you seriously been gay for karkat ever since that epic cringefest we started this dream with or what  
JOHN: uh, maybe?  
JOHN: thinking too much about it doesn't seem to help, it just sort of makes me second-guess things.  
JOHN: like with vriska!  
JOHN: i still don't know what exactly her deal is.  
JOHN: or was. with me, i mean.  
KARKAT: PLEASE DON'T TELL ME YOU'RE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING *HER* AGAIN?!  
JOHN: no, i just mean, what if i like _girls... too._  
DAVE: christ john you still havent even figured that much out  
DAVE: like youve already kissed more girls than i remember kissing  
JOHN: it just feels like there were always extenuating circumstances!  
JOHN: rose was dead, and kissing her was kind of gross, but i did it anyway because i didn't want her to die for good.  
JOHN: and jade's my sister, so obviously i am not going to act on that, or even really think about it.  
KARKAT: WHATEVER, JOHN. YOUR LOSS.  
JOHN: >:@  
DAVE: :|  
KARKAT: SHIT, NEVER MIND, NEVER *MIND*  
DAVE: john you honestly seem to have no idea what you need and are just staggering around the landscape of attraction like a drunken goat  
DAVE: i mean maybe the heart doesnt always know what it wants but id think some other parts of your anatomy would have a clearer perspective  
KARKAT: DAVE, JUST IMAGINE THIS MORON STUMBLING INTO VRISKA'S FLUSHED QUADRANT WITH HIS UTTERLY ARTLESS CHARMS.  
DAVE: dude i can see it all too clearly  
DAVE: the dork side is strong with this one  
KARKAT: AT THIS RATE HE'LL FILL ALL HIS QUADRANTS BY SHEER LUCK, SERENDIPITOUSLY IF YOU WILL, BEFORE ANY OF THE REST OF US.  
KARKAT: AND HE ISN'T EVEN A TROLL!  
DAVE: u mad bro  
KARKAT: WHAT? NO! GOD.  
DAVE: full of shit then  
KARKAT: YEAH. WAIT, NO! UGH!  
JOHN: my point is!  
JOHN: i told karkat i wasn't a homosexual earlier --  
DAVE: NO HOMO BRO  
JOHN: no, it wasn't like that! it just, god, shut up.  
JOHN: it was karkat's first time trolling me, and he just, like --  
KARKAT: JOHN, CAN YOU JUST SKIP THAT PART?  
KARKAT: I'LL WANT TO TAKE VIOLENT REPRISAL IF YOU DON'T, BUT I'D HAVE TO GET UP TO DO IT AND I DON'T FEEL LIKE IT.  
JOHN: dude, who is telling this story?! just let me tell dave my story!  
DAVE: nah its cool john i think i saw a replay of that earlier  
KARKAT: URGH, GOD, DON'T REMIND ME.  
JOHN: so like, the whole thing was weird because it was over pesterchum, and we were already sort of buddies, and i just had no way of knowing about any of that, at all.  
JOHN: so when i showed up here, and karkat started hating on me, like, IN PERSON...  
JOHN: something just... sort of came together and felt right?  
DAVE: thank FUCK  
DAVE: see THIS is what im talking about  
JOHN: come on, give me some kind of credit, dave!  
DAVE: man sometimes i seriously wish i was capable of uncritically and unselfconsciously burying myself balls deep in some dudes grill  
KARKAT: YOU THINK WAY TOO HARD ABOUT THIS KIND OF SHIT, DAVE.  
KARKAT: AND SO DO I.  
KARKAT: MUCH AS I HATE TO ADMIT IT, I THINK EGBERT'S ONTO SOMETHING HERE.  
JOHN: anyway, shrug. guess that means i'm gay.  
JOHN: gay enough, at least!  


You're growing more comfortable with the new nomenclature. It's starting to become a shared badge of honor among the three of you.

JOHN: i don't think i could ever like him the way you do, though.  
KARKAT: WELL THAT'S CONVENIENT, BECAUSE IF YOU DID I'M PRETTY SURE I WOULD STILL FUCKING HATE YOU.  
JOHN: oh, what a relief, i was getting SO WORRIED about that.  
KARKAT: YOU ABSOLUTELY SUCK AT KISSING, YOU KNOW.  
KARKAT: GOD, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT, JUST FACE PLANTING ONTO MY FACE?!  
JOHN: shut up, nobody asked you!  
KARKAT: WELL, MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE ASKED ME!  
KARKAT: IN FACT, MAYBE I COULD GIVE YOU LESSONS, SO YOU COULD BE LESS EMBARRASSINGLY BAD BOTH ON APPROACH AND EXECUTION, AND I WOULDN'T WANT TO THROW UP IN MY MOUTH A LITTLE EVERY TIME OUR LIPS TOUCH.  
DAVE: you know that just ends up with you throwing up in _his_ mouth  
JOHN: ewww!  
KARKAT: DAVE, THAT COMMENT? THAT WAS NOT ONLY COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY, BUT WELL PAST THE PALE OF GRATUITOUS NASTINESS.  
DAVE: come on kitkat you know you were at LEAST that bad at it until we got a few solid hours of cpr training under our belts  
KARKAT: UGH, DON'T REMIND ME. JUST LET ME LAPSE BACK INTO BLISSFUL FORGETFULNESS.  
DAVE: john you better be grateful for all the dream hours i logged slogging through troll gag just so you could make out with this mug  
DAVE: not sure i was much better really at first tbh  
DAVE: still freaking out way too much at the time  
JOHN: but you're freaking out less now! right, dave?  


That question is a bit more pointed than you wanted it to be, and the sharp end of it punctures Dave's chill. He goes a little pale, a little drawn, retreating into himself just past the threshold of presence. The fingers scratching the back of Karkat's head slow to a halt and go slack, forgotten.

It looks like he needs something, so instinctively, you reach out and give his left hand what you hope will be a reassuring squeeze. He comes back to you with a start and a sharp intake of breath, which he then releases in a prolonged, weary sigh. Karkat has to re-adjust to make himself comfortable again.

DAVE: i dunno man  
DAVE: i think i still got a ways to go on this heros journey thing  
DAVE: which honestly  
DAVE: i never thought squaring off with ones own sexuality would be something a hero would be expected to do  
DAVE: used to think it was all about stealth and sharp blades and fucking hypervigilance for physical threats lurking in any shadow at any time  
DAVE: about slicing goddamn meteors in half like overcooked meatballs  
DAVE: or like  
DAVE: getting run through in some badass duel with the boss  
DAVE: and never once flinching or showing the least regret or remorse  
DAVE: no matter how much you might actually have on the inside  
DAVE: didnt think it could be heroic to  
DAVE: yknow  
DAVE: put my arms around someone  
DAVE: or trust my instincts around them enough to kick back finally  
DAVE: and my stomach still twists up a little every time i do  
DAVE: to say nothing of  
DAVE: the other stuff  
DAVE: it kind of feels like living a borrowed life sometimes  
DAVE: like at any minute the closet door could burst open and hed be  
DAVE: standing there with a smuppet in one hand  
DAVE: and an unbreakable katana in the other  
DAVE: and id know the jig was up  
DAVE: its gonna be a process  
DAVE: to say the least  


The word _process_ still hangs in the air like a black cloud as he continues.

DAVE: you know at one point  
DAVE: rose told me about the new session were headed towards  
DAVE: that among other far out things  
DAVE: apparently the players are all gonna be the cool teen parallel universe reincarnations of our respective parental units  
DAVE: and when we finally get there  
DAVE: i am seriously not looking forward to explaining this shit to him  
DAVE: or having our other friends explain it to him if he asks  
DAVE: and watching everything fall apart  
JOHN: look dave, honestly...  
JOHN: how do you know that's how it'll happen?  
JOHN: like, what if it turns out he's just as gay as you are?  
JOHN: or gayer, even?  
DAVE: yeah right  
DAVE: that has about as much likelihood of being true as i have inclination to ask him about it  
JOHN: i'm serious, dave!  
JOHN: hasn't that basically been you and karkat the whole time?  
KARKAT: NOT EVEN REMOTELY COMPARABLE.  
KARKAT: DAVE'S WEIRD LUSUS HAD WAY MORE SWAY OVER HIM THAN I EVER DID.  
KARKAT: STILL HAS, IN FACT.  
JOHN: maybe THAT'S why you haven't been much help to him, then.  
KARKAT: FUCK OFF, JOHN.  
KARKAT: DIDN'T I SAY I HAD MY OWN ISSUES?  
JOHN: uh, i guess?  
JOHN: so are you saying your, uh, guardian made you feel as awful about dating aliens as dave's bro did about him dating boys?  
KARKAT: OH SURE, LIKE I'M GOING TO JUST TELL YOU THAT.  


Karkat scowls at you, but not with nearly the same intensity; his heart isn't in the scowl, but on his sleeve. He steals a glance at Dave, holding his breath -- then lets it out slowly and turns his head away, avoiding eye contact with either of you. Suddenly he seems a lot older, and sadder, than you've ever imagined him, as if he's tapped into some wellspring of sorrow from which he only drinks alone.

KARKAT: IT WASN'T SO MUCH MY LUSUS, AS THE FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE OF ALTERNIAN SOCIETY.  


Looks like he is going to just tell you that after all.

KARKAT: REMEMBER, HER IMPERIAL CONDESCENSION WAS RUNNING, AND AGGRESSIVELY EXPANDING, A GALACTIC EMPIRE, SUBJUGATING ALL THAT CAME IN HER WAY.  
KARKAT: THIS IS THE FUTURE WE WERE ALL BEING GROOMED FOR, THE FUTURE IT WAS ONCE MY AMBITION TO CARRY OUT AS A THRESHECUTIONER.  
KARKAT: THE ADULTS WOULD HAVE COME INTO CONTACT WITH PLENTY OF ALIENS, AND TREATED THEM EITHER AS VERMIN, OR SLAVES.  
KARKAT: YOU DON'T DATE VERMIN.  
KARKAT: YOU DON'T DATE SLAVES EITHER, THOUGH YOU MIGHT USE THEM FOR PLEASURE.  
KARKAT: BEING GENETICALLY INCOMPATIBLE WITH US, THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN USELESS FOR ANY DUTIES INVOLVING FILIAL PAILS.  
KARKAT: KEEPING AN ALIEN SLAVE AS A CONCUBINE WOULD HAVE BEEN A RARE INDULGENCE FOR HIGHBLOODS, BUT FILLING ONE'S FLUSHED QUADRANT WITH ONE WOULD HAVE LEFT THEM FALLING SHORT WHEN THE DRONES CAME.  
KARKAT: AND TREATING AN ALIEN AS A KISMESIS WOULD HAVE IMPLIED NOT MERELY CONCUPISCIENT ATTRACTION, BUT SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE AND AN ASPIRATION TO EMULATE, WHICH WOULD HAVE GOTTEN EVEN HIGHBLOOD OFFENDERS CULLED.  
KARKAT: NOT EVERYONE ADOPTED THIS MENTALITY TO THE SAME DEGREE, BUT IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID.  
KARKAT: ANOTHER REASON KANAYA WOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT FROM THE REST OF US, BOTH AS SOMEONE WHO LIVED IN ISOLATION AND AS A JADEBLOOD.  
JOHN: wow, karkat. that's...  
JOHN: that's kind of messed up.  
KARKAT: IT WASN'T, AT THE TIME. IT WAS JUST COMMON SENSE.  
KARKAT: NONE OF IT REALLY APPLIES ANYMORE, SINCE ALTERNIA WAS DESTROYED.  
JOHN: what about vriska and terezi, though?  
KARKAT: THEY WERE ALWAYS JUST GOING TO DO WHATEVER THEY WANTED ANYWAY.  
KARKAT: THEY'RE UNHINGED. I'M THE ONLY ONE IN THIS CROWD WITH ANY SENSE, EXCEPT MY SENSE DOESN'T MAKE SENSE NOW, OBVIOUSLY.  
KARKAT: BUT DON'T THINK IT'S EASY FOR ME JUST BECAUSE I'M TALKING ABOUT IT SO PLAINLY.  
KARKAT: I'VE ALWAYS GOT A GANDERBULB ON THE DOOR MYSELF.  
KARKAT: AND IT'S PRETTY FUCKING WEIRD OPENING UP LIKE THIS TO ANYONE I MIGHT HAVE EVEN A PASSING PITCH INTEREST IN.  
KARKAT: IT'S LIKE I'M PRACTICALLY HANDING YOU THE KNIFE AND SHOWING YOU JUST HOW TO TWIST IT.  
JOHN: god, why would i blame you for this or make fun of you about it?  
JOHN: what would the point be? it isn't your fault!  
KARKAT: STAY IN YOUR SQUARE, EGBERT.  
KARKAT: THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN THAT WOULD BE IF YOU STARTED TO PITY ME.  
KARKAT: AND I, I JUST...  
KARKAT: I CAN'T FACE THAT RIGHT NOW.  
JOHN: uh...  
JOHN: don't worry, asshole.  
JOHN: i'm not going to stop hating you over some dumb feelings like this.  
KARKAT: *sniff*  
KARKAT: THANKS, JOHN. YOU IDIOT.  


That last insult was weak as the White Queen's tea. You reach out to give him a poke in the ribs, but he just bats your hand away.

DAVE: look can we take a break from talking about all this heavy stuff  
DAVE: its wheels within wheels and gears around gears for us both  
DAVE: and ive kind of had my share of processing for one sitting  
DAVE: i just wanna wallow in total self indulgent pillow fort bullshit with you guys a while longer before the future gets here  


You and Karkat nod in mute agreement.

DAVE: lets change the subject  
DAVE: weve been cooped up here on this gnarly roid for  
DAVE: 1 year 11 months 2 weeks 3.547293 days of proper time now  
DAVE: dunno about actual spacetime since thats not a thing in the ring  
DAVE: but shit be dragging even with this kind of choice diversion  
DAVE: how long things been over there for you  
DAVE: and whatcha been up to with furry princess and bird me  


You start to answer and then realize you actually have no idea how much time has passed. As to what you've been doing, that's kind of foggy as well. Fractured images and hazy impressions are spread out on the cutting room floor of your mind. Your attention reaches out for them but they waft away from your grasp, elusive.

JOHN: oh! um, gosh.  
JOHN: i, uh, i don't actually know?  
JOHN: it all seems like such a blur!  
DAVE: rough guess  
JOHN: like, a really really long time!  
JOHN: and i'm pretty sure it's been boring as hell.  
JOHN: i remember... playing some games, and bumming around on deck watching stars zoom past, and arguing with jade and dave sprite about pointless things.  
JOHN: because we were all going so stir crazy!  
JOHN: and maybe it wasnt really fair, especially to jade.  
JOHN: but the weird part is, i feel like that hasn't happened yet?  
JOHN: even though i remember it!  
JOHN: am i imagining it or something?  
JOHN: it feels like we've been on the ship forever, and yet not very long.  
DAVE: john youre killing me here  
DAVE: how am i supposed to live vicariously through your scuttlebutt about space shenanigans if you cant even fucking remember it  
JOHN: i don't know! it's just not coming to me.  
JOHN: sorry!  
DAVE: ugh youre useless to me  
DAVE: ok if it all seems like a blur to you then what was the literal last stupid hijink you got up to before dreaming in here  
JOHN: i...  
JOHN: uh.  
JOHN: i was gonna hang out with dave sprite?  
JOHN: but on lowas, with the consorts.  
JOHN: so jade shrank us down?  
JOHN: and i was gonna show him around, because he spent all his time in our session with you on lohac, or on the battlefield.  
JOHN: so we were just walking up to one of the consort villages, and...  
JOHN: uh.  
JOHN: i can't remember anything after that!  
JOHN: maybe i just fell asleep?  
DAVE: god is davesprite really that boring to be around  
JOHN: haha, or maybe vriska is still fucking with me!  
KARKAT: NO, THAT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE.  
KARKAT: SHE COULD DO THAT BEFORE BECAUSE YOUR UNIVERSE WAS ENTIRELY CONTAINED AS AN OFFSHOOT OF OUR OWN TIME STREAM, WE HAD READ/WRITE ACCESS TO IT AS YOUR CREATORS, AND ALL WE HAD TO DO WAS ALIGN TROLLIAN TO IT.  
KARKAT: BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT'S GOING ON NOW.  
DAVE: yeah i think thats what id call coordinate time  
DAVE: instead of proper time which is like what the watch on your wrist is supposed to read  
DAVE: we still have proper time but coordinate time is all snarled and knotted and wibbly wobbly and basically completely fucked out here  
DAVE: rose picked out this one little tunnel we could take through it so we would actually get there within a finite proper time and not lose our collective shit  
DAVE: id skip to the end but i dont dare try to time travel through coordinate time under the circumstances  
JOHN: also, you'd miss all these sweet makeouts and pillow forts!  
DAVE: haha yeah that too  
JOHN: wait, what's that?  
KARKAT: I DON'T HEAR ANYTHING.  
JOHN: shut up shut up!  


You all stop talking for a moment but then you hear it: a rumbling in the distance, still faint, but getting louder.

JOHN: hold on guys, i'm gonna check that out.  
DAVE: yeah im coming too  
KARKAT: THREE.  
JOHN: no, you both stay here and chill out.  
JOHN: it's probably nothing!  
DAVE: careful man  
DAVE: you never know what could hit you  
KARKAT: LOOK, JUST DON'T DITCH US FOR VRISKA, OKAY?  
DAVE: haha i bet that IS vriska  
DAVE: rolling down the hall like some kind of mayan death katamari because john just stepped on the one cursed panel in the floor  
DAVE: shes come to exact her revenge upon us all  
KARKAT: YOU'RE ASSUMING SHE COULD FIT INTO THE PASSAGEWAY IN THE FIRST PLACE.  
DAVE: ahahaha true  
KARKAT: MOST LIKELY HER SPIDERY ASS IS WEDGED INTO A CORNER AND THAT'S THE SOUND OF HER SWEARING.  
DAVE: shes probably stuck there until we can get the crane fired up  
JOHN: uhhh.  
JOHN: vriska... isn't really that fat, is she?  
DAVE: not so much fat really as  
DAVE: shall we say  
DAVE: _larger than life_  
KARKAT: THIS ISN'T REALLY ABOUT HER, JOHN. IT'S JUST...  
KARKAT: GET BACK HERE SOON, ALL RIGHT?  
KARKAT: YOU'RE TOO GODDAMN COMFORTABLE AND THIS STUPID LUMPY PILLOW ISN'T AN ADEQUATE SUBSTITUTE.  
JOHN: uh, okay!  
JOHN: anyway, i'll be right back!  


** > John: Investigate. **

You give a soft little peck on the forehead to Dave, and a gratuitous noogie to Karkat. Then, after extricating yourself from the pile, you crawl out and gingerly swing one of the pillows aside, like an escape hatch on a submarine. This mars the delicate drape of the fort's ceiling, and you make sure to replace the pillow and the drape once you're out into the hallway. It's grown uncomfortably warm out here; you wonder why it isn't flat-out stifling in the fort?

You follow the rumbling noise down the corridor a little farther, past some other closets with doors discreetly closed (you think they're unoccupied). A thin blade of light slices out from underneath a gap of one of them. You try the handle, find it's open, and walk out into...

...your bedroom.

The light is as ubiquitous as daylight would have been, but it has an artificial, fluorescent tinge to it. You recognize the source as the overhead lights in the living room on the gold ship, which stand in for the sun as LOWAS floats in the middle of your shared space. Yeah, so this is where you were -- hanging out with Dave Sprite.

Where's Dave Sprite? No, just Dave -- a Dave is a Dave is a Dave, now. Maybe he went to the bath-- no, you're not gonna think about that, and not just because you're sure you never had time to fix the plumbing after Rose ripped it out. That feels like years ago now. You look back through the open door at the rocky meteor wall, the reinforced steel struts holding the tunnel open, and then around at the room you've lived in all your life before now, awash in a sickly blue glow.

JOHN: d-dave?  


The ominous rumble has pitched up to a continuous drone, setting your teeth on edge.

The hallway door beckons. The air sizzles. Where has he gone?

You look out the open window just in time to see the surface of the planet crack, great gouts of red-hot magma and superheated steam breaking forth. Horrified, you run down back towards the doorway, but the tsunami of flame bears down on you faster than your feet will carry you. You have no idea _whose_ memory of your planet this is, and you don't have time to figure it out before the blinding light engulfs you and your entire field of vision --


	6. Chapter 6

** > John: Wake up. **

You startle and nearly jump clean out of bed.

A sharp gust of hot, dry wind blowing through the open window has just pushed your heavy curtains aside, letting the summer morning sun shine straight onto your sleep-gummed eyeballs. You squint and for once really wish you had access to Dave's shades. It's not more than an hour after sunrise and it's already heating up in here; the cicadas are buzzing up a storm. It took ages to cool down last night, and it's going to be another scorcher today for sure.

You look around your room. It's more or less the way it always has been, but you're not used to it being this bright. Dust motes stirred up by the wind waltz lazily through the incoming sunbeam, settling out onto the chair and computer desk. You haven't dusted in here in like forever.

You can already feel the images in your head starting to fray at the edges.

** > John: Check messages. **

The lock screen on your phone says it's June 11, according to the agreed-upon dating convention, in Year 3 of your time on Earth C. Oh hey, doesn't that mean tomorrow is Karkat's birthday? Or wriggling day, or whatever. Alien words. You had forgotten; you haven't looked at your actual calendar in weeks. You've barely wanted to move. You've spent day after day lounging around in your god-tier pajamas, eating cereal for dinner at three in the morning.

You unlock the phone and scroll through a bunch of Pesterchum messages from Dave and Jade over the last week. Jade's apparently planning a party for Karkat and needs your help with something? You scroll back farther. Looks like you were supposed to help wrangle formal paper invites, but you've totally fallen over on that one and you just know she's gonna be cheesed at you even though she doesn't say that over chat. Dave's messages are more of the same, but only in the last couple of days; it looks like Jade enlisted him to try to pry you out of bed. Why didn't they find someone more reliable? Jeez.

Fucking Karkat. What an assmonkey, you swear. You haven't seen him in months; he supposedly hasn't left his house -- Dave's house -- any more often than you've left yours. The last party you saw him at, he just sat in the corner with Dave and fumed. Doesn't matter, you can picture his detestably rakish mug right in front of you, hair all mussed, fangs poking out over his bottom lip just enough to look super dumb, pale yellow eyes full of aggression and pride and thirst. And his grumbling! Lord, he just _would not_ stop.

Are you going to go, John? The mere prospect fills you with anxiety, even dread. Everyone's going to ask you where you've been, what you've been doing with your immortal life and priceless gift of a universe, and you won't be able to explain to their satisfaction how leaden your limbs feel when weighted down by an aimless spirit. Besides, Karkat's mostly gotten along just fine without his kism--

Uh.

Did that really happen?

** > John: _Write your dream down, you idiot._ **

You need to make some sense of this shit before it all evaporates, so you can sort out what's real and what isn't. You'll be too disoriented to face the day unless you at least make the attempt.

Typing won't do, too many distractions. You grab the nearest pencil and paper, slam your ass in the desk chair and start writing. What happened? Okay, you were on the ship, you had the chat with Dave and Karkat, they ditched you, you swirled around in the vents and oh god that's right. That scene of Dave and Karkat in the closet. The blood rushes to your face all over again, and your lip starts to throb on its own.

It's a dream. It was totally a dream. But did it _happen?_

If such a formative episode had actually happened, it would have been by far the most interesting part of the whole three-year journey and you'd think you'd be able to place it. But it's so _vivid._ It sticks out like a bent nail in the metaphorical coffin that is the otherwise open-and-shut story of your SBURB session, and hence of your life to date. Did you retcon that? No, why would you retcon something as outlandish as _kissing Karkat._ No way would Terezi have told you to do something like that. It can't have -- no, it _must have_ \--

The overwhelming smell of _boy_ in that tiny closet. It dissolved _everything_ you thought you knew. God, no _wonder_ you couldn't get up the nerve to ask Roxy out if _this_ was the code lurking in your lizard brain's deep subroutines. The sting, still smarting, of missing Vriska on that trip and thereafter -- even though you know now she was way too unhinged for anything stable, however unconventional, to have worked out with her -- that pales compared to...

Karkat. Karkat Karkat Karkat. Karkat's fingers running under Dave's shirt and over his glorious ribs. Karkat's lips on yours, Karkat's gross tongue and taste in your mouth, Karkat rolling down the hall ass over horns with you, Karkat's weight laid out across your lap and his sharp edges poised to hold you to account. Karkat's crusty cacology, a poetry of the pissed-off, delivered from atop you but just as much for Dave's ears. Karkat either praising or burying the Alternian Empire, you aren't sure which. Karkat _utterly_ failing to come clean with you both until you fucking _made_ him. Karkat _daring_ you to hold him to account, as only you could. All you can think of is Karkat and it's driving you shithive maggots. And yet...

Dave with a handful of Karkat's ass. Dave scratching Karkat behind the ear. Dave with his left arm hanging over your shoulders and keeping you close, Dave hugging you unprompted and unironically, Dave looking more alive and... tender than you've seen him since. Towards you, too. Dave calling you all _the gay trifecta_ , claiming he had to be there with both of you in case you tried to play too rough, but really just not wanting to miss the show. The pressure of Dave's knuckles against the pad of your palm as you squeezed, a still point of presence in a time of turmoil for him. The precise frequency of Dave's voice wavering as he waded through his fears about coming out to his Bro.

In the end, you were right about that on all counts: Dirk turned out to be totally reasonable, friendly if a bit reclusive... and also, apparently, substantially gayer than Dave. For all you know, he and Jake are probably just now langorously stretching out their perfect Hellenic physiques, a duplicate of your sunbeam gilding every rumple in their 300-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, and turning with sultry eyes towards each other for a morning of... um. Whatever those guys get up to.

You're not sure knowing that helped Dave much. Or Karkat. In the reunion circle jam on the victory platform, you could tell Dave and Karkat were basically joined at the hip, but they still showed at least some pretense of Knightly reserve towards each other, and towards you. They've stayed between two and twenty feet away from each other ever since then, from what Jade tells you whenever she needs to vent her frustrations to someone.

Bastards! They wouldn't admit _any_ of that to you, even then! They must both have _known_ it was real, and they still won't...

Unless, last night, they...?

The quadrant discussion. The majestic winged horse Karkat couldn't stop flogging. You still don't really understand all the nuances, and you're not sure it's important that you do. Somehow, through an alchemy of dreams not powered by grist, a set of seemingly arbitrary card suit metaphors gave Karkat the power to bind strange forces to serve his needs, and Dave's, and yours. They clearly need each other. You saw that before.

_But they also need you._

The pencil lead snaps under the pressure you're applying; you've been practically gouging the paper for the last few lines. Fuck. Pencil sharpener, pencil sharpener. Can't find one. Fuck. Doesn't matter, there's no way you could forget all that now. The dream journal has done its dirty work; the dream images -- _memories?_ \-- have had new life breathed into them, and stand crisp and colorful in your mind as if you had just lived it all again.

** > John: Don't just stand there! **

A refreshing breeze blows through the window, breaking up the stagnant air in the room and sending the dust swirling again. You look out to see a gray cloud passing over the sun, with more on the way. They drag a thin gray curtain of rain behind them. That's good! The land needs it.

You stick your head out the window and inhale deeply: the dusty smell of drought from the brown grass crying out for relief, and that metallic tang from the approaching storm. You roll your head around slowly to the left, then to the right, then lace your fingers behind your back and arch -- feeling the pop of tension like bubble wrap, released in little pockets as you work it out. 

After washing the rest of the tension and stale dudestench away with a hot shower, you open your closet, pass your god-tier jammies over this time and reach instead for something you almost never wear -- a sky-blue Oxford shirt, one with a proper button-down collar, that shows off your shoulders and chest to advantage. The track pants get swapped out for stonewashed blue jeans. You keep the yellow canvas sneakers; they're still snappy and they'll stay clean even if you get rained on, and round it all out with a navy blue blazer, your aspect symbol embroidered on the lapel. A bit of aftershave and you're practically whistling. Your... your dad would have been so proud.

You fly, metaphorically, down the stairs, two at a time, then literally take to the skies once you're out the door. Your neighborhood shrinks to diorama scale beneath you, then fades beneath the gathering clouds as you lock in your course for the Troll Kingdom, the god-given jet stream whipping through your hair. The party invites waited this long, they can wait a few more hours; you'll hand-deliver them later. But you've got more urgent business to attend to.

It's high fucking time you paid Dave and Karkat a visit.


End file.
